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lQ{] 


PUBLIC SCHOOL QUESTION, 

AS UNDERSTOOD BY 


A CATHOLIC AMEBIC AN CITIZEN, 

AND BY 

A LIBERAL AMERICAN CITIZEN 


TWO LECTURES, 


BEFORE THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, IN HOR¬ 
TICULTURAL HALL, BOSTON, 


BY 

BISHOP McQUAID AND PEAHOIS E, ABBOT. 


BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED BY THE FREE RELIGIOUS ASSOCIATION, 

No. 1 TREMONT PLACE. 

1876. 




CO CUBAN £ Sc SAMPSON, PRINTERS, 

Q BROMFIELD STREET, 



PRELIMINARY NOTE. 


The Free Religious Association, having charge of what 
are known in Boston as the “ Horticultural Hall Lec¬ 
tures,” invites to its platform men whose faiths so widely 
differ that no other platform, distinctively religious, is apt 
to welcome them to equal rights. That is what the As¬ 
sociation is for. It earnestly tries to stand for Freedom 
and Fellowship in Religion: its objects, as stated in its 
Constitution, being “ to promote the practical interests of 
pure religion, to increase fellowship in the spirit, and to 
encourage the scientific study of man’s religious nature and 
history; and to this end all persons interested in these ob¬ 
jects are cordially invited to its membership.” 

One of the subjects selected for this winter was the ques¬ 
tion on which Roman Catholic citizens are taking ground 
so generally against their fellow-citizens, — that of the 
Right and Justice of our long-established Public School 
System. No question is 'more > certain to be decided 
with snap-judgments by the thoughtless on both sides, and 
with prejudice even by the thoughtful. It was believed 
that a calm discussion between two able men, each 
stating squarely the strongest argument for his own side, 



4 


would help both sides to see more fairly what the Cath¬ 
olic’s sense of justice is demanding, what the demand in¬ 
volves, and what real justice sanctions in the matter. No 
man represents the Roman Catholic’s view better than the 
Bishop who so courteously consented to come from 
Rochester, N.Y., to give the first lecture here printed; 
and no one more strongly represents the opposite view 
than the Editor of the “Index,” who, on the following Sun¬ 
day, gave the second lecture. The two lectures have been, 
or will be, printed separately. But is is much to be hoped 
that they will be widely circulated and read together , — 
especially that the non-Catholic will read and ponder the 
Bishop’s plea, and that as generally the Catholic will read 
and ponder the Editor’s. After one of the lectures a friend 
came up to us and praised the Free Religious Association 
for giving the public the chance to hear both sides : “ And 
now to-day,” we said to him, “ the speaker has been 
listened to by an audience, most of them opposed to his 
and your views ; how is it with your people, — are they as 
willing in turn to listen to the other side ? ” The shoulders 
shrugged: “ Why, no,” said he; “what other side is there? ” 
He offered reasons, too; but that is the spirit which all 
American citizens, whether they call themselves “ Cath¬ 
olic ” or “ Liberal,” are equally concerned to avoid and to 
rebuke. That is the spirit which makes the danger. 


THE 


PUBLIC SCHOOL QUESTION, 

AS UNDERSTOOD BT THE CATHOLIC AMER¬ 
ICAN CITIZEN. 


A LECTURE BY BISHOP McQUAID, 

Of Rochester, N.Y., 

DELIVERED IN BOSTON, FEB. 13, 1876. 


I wish to say that I am here as a Catholic American 
citizen, speaking only for myself and my country, and in no 
way responsible for Mexico, South America, Spain, or any 
other country in the world. 

The School Question is engrossing more and more the 
attention of all classes in the country. President Grant 
devotes a portion of his annual message to the subject, 
and calls for yet larger consideration of it by the Legis¬ 
latures of the States. Politicians worry and fret over it, 
not knowing how the current may chance to run, and, 
consequently, which course they should take. Ministers 
and editors, from pulpit and press, flood the country with 
their learning and wisdom, well spiced with warnings and 
threats to all who dare differ from them. And yet the last 
to be heard and consulted is the one to whom the settle¬ 
ment of the question, first and finally, belongs, — the 
parent of the child. 





6 


THE SCHOOL QUESTION TO BE SETTLED BY PARENTS. 

The father may listen to well-meant good advice ; his 
fears may be excited by denunciations of impending peril 
for himself and offspring,; laws may be enacted to in¬ 
terfere with his natural rights; he may be mulcted 
through his purse, and harassed in many ways; his 
neighbors may turn against him : yet, in despite of all, 
the responsibility of the education of his child falls on 
him and on no one else. He may be assisted in his work 
by others, if so he will, but in accordance with his will 
and choice, and not according to the conscience of his 
neighbors or of his fellow-citizens. 

PARENTAL RIGHTS BEFORE STATE RIGHTS. 

Parental rights precede State rights. Indeed, as the 
Declaration of Independence has it, Governments are 
instituted to secure man’s inalienable rights; and among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. A 
father’s right to the pursuit of happiness extends to that 
of his children as well. This happiness is not restricted 
to material and earthly enjoyment, but reaches to every¬ 
thing conducive to joy, pleasure, contentment of mind 
and soul, in this world and the next, if the father believes 
in a future life. 

PARENTAL RIGHTS AND DUTIES ACCORDING TO COMMON 
LAW. 

Parental rights include parental duties and responsibil¬ 
ities before God and society. The common law is ex¬ 
plicit on this point, as Blackstone and Kent assert: “A 
parent may, under circumstances, be indicted at common 
law for not supplying an infant child with necessaries.”— 
(Chitty on Blackstone.) 


7 


u During the minority of a child . . . the parent is ab 
solutely bound to provide reasonably for his maintenance 
and education, and he may be sued for necessaries fur¬ 
nished, and schooling given, to a child under just and 
reasonable circumstances.” — (Kent’s Com., Vol. II., p. 
iv.; Lee. XXIX.) 

THE COMMON LAW DEFINED BY JUDGE LEWIS. 

The rights of parents are strongly and clearly defined 
by Judge Ellis Lewis, in “Commonwealth vs. Armstrong, 
Lycoming County, Pa., August Session, 1842.” The 
Judge, having sent his decision to Chancellor Kent, re¬ 
ceived in reply an approval of its correctness, and of the 
reasoning on which it was based. In this opinion Judge 
Lewis says: “ The authority of the father results from 

his duties. He is charged with the duty of maintenance 
and education. . . . The term 1 education ’ is not limited 
to the ordinary instruction of the child in the pursuits of 
literature: it comprehends a proper attention to the 
moral and religious sentiments of the child. In the dis¬ 
charge of this duty, it is the undoubted right of the father 
to designate such teachers either in morals, religion, or 
literature, as he shall deem best calculated to give correct 
instruction to his child.” In sustainment of his opinion, 
the Judge quotes from Horry, Prof, of Moral Philosophy, 
from Dr. Adam Clarke, from Paley, and from Dr. Way- 
land, who, in his Moral Philosophy, writes: “ The right 
of the parent is to command, — the duty of the child is 
to obey. . ‘. . The relation is established by our Creator. 

. . . The duty of parents is to educate their children in 
such a manner as they (the parents) believe will be most 
for their future happiness, both temporal and eternal. . . . 
With his duty in this respect no one has a right to inter¬ 
fere. . . . While he exercises his parental duties within 
their prescribed limits, he is, by the law of God, exempt 


8 


from interference both from individuals and from society.” 
After citing these authorities and various passages of the 
sacred Scriptures, the Judge goes on to say: “It is the 
duty of the parent to regulate the conscience of the child 
by proper attention to its education; and there is no se¬ 
curity for the offspring during the tender years of its 
minority, but in obedience to the authority of its parents 
in all things not injurious to its health or morals.” 

BY THE SUPREME COURT OF WISCONSIN. 

The Supreme Court of Wisconsin, in 1874, went so far 
in maintenance of parental rights, that it gave to a father 
the right to decide for his son what branches of elemen¬ 
tary studies embraced in the school curriculum he should 
not follow, against the will and decision of the teacher 
and the school committee. The Court based its judg¬ 
ment on these indefeasible parental rights embodied in 
the common law. 

DOES THE CHILD BELONG TO THE STATE? 

It is the Christian view of parental rights and duties 
which is here given. It is presented under the supposi¬ 
tion, that, however great in these United States the dimi¬ 
nution of Christians in point of numbers, there may be 
left enough to constitute an important part of the popula¬ 
tion, with rights warranted by the natural, the divine, and 
the common law, worthy of consideration. The doctrine 
coming into vogue, that the child belongs to the State, is 
the dressing up of an old skeleton of Spartan Paganism, 
with its hideousness dimly disguised by a thin cloaking 
of Christian morality. The most despotic governments 
of Europe illustrate the fruits of the doctrine, by making 
every one of their subjects an armed soldier for the butch¬ 
ering of fellow creatures in neighboring States, under the 
forms of legalized warfare. 


9 


THE EVANGELICAL CHRISTIAN’S AUTHORITY FOR PAREN¬ 
TAL DUTIES. 

The Evangelical Christian, who believes in the revealed 
word of God, reads in the sacred Book the teachings of 
his Master on the respective duties of parent and child, 
and regards these teachings as the law of his life: — 

“ Children, obey your parents in the Lord ; for this is just. 

“ Honor thy father and thy mother; which is the first com¬ 
mandment with a promise; 

“That it may be well with thee, and thou mayst be long- 
lived on earth. 

“ And you, fathers, provoke not your children to anger ; but 
bring them up in the discipline and correction of the Lord.” 
Ephes. vi. 1-4. 

“ Children, obey your parents in all things ; for this is well¬ 
pleasing to the Lord.” Col. iii. 20. 

THE CATHOLIC CHRISTIAN’S AUTHORITY. 

The Catholic Christian, taught to hear the Church which 
is commissioned to teach all divine truths with infallible 
certainty, learns that he cannot neglect the care and edu¬ 
cation of his children without grievous sin ; that their re¬ 
ligious instruction demands his chief thought; and that to 
expose them to danger in faith or morals, in schools or 
elsewhere, would bring on him the just anger of God, and 
punishment hereafter. He knows that an education which 
excludes God, and is confined to material thoughts and 
interests, is one of which for his children he cannot ap¬ 
prove. 


HOW THE CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE IS FORMED. 

On the natural law, and on the law divinely revealed, 
and presented to him by God’s chosen agent —the 
Church — does the Catholic form his conscience. He 


IO 


does not expect that his conscientious convictions in mat¬ 
ters of religion will please others: no more is he pleased 
with the professed creeds of the majority of his fellow- 
citizens. These form their conscience on grounds satis¬ 
factory to them; he forms his on grounds still more satis¬ 
factory to him. “The divine law,” says Newman, “is 
the rule of ethical truth, the standard of right and wrong; 
a sovereign, irreversible, absolute authority in the pres¬ 
ence of men and angels.” “ The divine law,” says Car¬ 
dinal Gousset, “is the supreme rule of actions; our 
thoughts, desires, words, acts, all that man is, is subject 
to the domain of the law of God ; and this law is the rule 
of our conduct by means of our conscience. Hence it is 
never lawful to go against our conscience.” 

“Conscience,” says Newman, “is not a long-sighted 
selfishness, nor a desire to be consistent with one’s self; but 
it is a messenger from Him, who, in nature and in grace, 
speaks to us behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by 
his representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal Vicar 
of Christ, a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its 
peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas; 
and, even though the eternal priesthood throughout the 
Church could cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle 
would remain and would have sway.” 

The theory of freedom of conscience guaranteed by the 
Constitution as a right is conceded to the Catholic by 
Secularist and Evangelical. The wording of the Consti¬ 
tution, and our loud boasting, at home and abroad, of lib¬ 
erty of conscience as a special privilege of democratic 
government, demand this concession. Theory and prac¬ 
tice clash. The Constitution rules that all shall be free 
to follow the dictates of conscience, provided there is no 
encroachment on the freedom of others. The majority of 
the people rule, by the power of numbers, that a large 
minority shall not be free to educate their children ac¬ 
cording to their conscience. 


11 


THE CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE SHOULD BE FREE. 

Having proved that the Catholic conscience is founded 
on the natural and the revealed law, protected in its 
right by the common law and the Constitution of the 
United States, the claim that Catholic parents should be 
untrammelled in the exercise of parental duties brings 
me to the consideration of school education as affecting 
this conscience. 

It is conceded by Free Religionists, by the ablest of the 
secular press, by many representative ministers of the 
Evangelical churches and by large numbers of the peo¬ 
ple, that to tax Catholics, Jews, and Infidels for schools 
in which the Bible is read and religious exercises are held, 
is a wrong, an act of injustice, a form of tyranny. So 
understanding the case, the cities of Troy, Rochester, 
Cincinnati and Chicago, have forbidden religious exer¬ 
cises of any description in their common schools. This 
is a confession that would not have been made thirty years 
ago. It is a partial reparation of the past. Especially 
is it a warning to Boards of Education in other places to 
cease inflicting this mode of religious persecution on cit¬ 
izens who object to any kind of religion, or to the peculiar 
kind prevailing in their schools. Mr. Beecher says : “ It 
is not right or fair to tax Catholics or Jews for the support 
of schools in which the Bible is read.” His congregation 
applauded the saying. If it is not right, it is wrong, and 
Catholics who are thus taxed are, to the extent of the 
taxes they pay, punished, —persecuted for religion’s sake. 

INFRINGEMENT OF CONSCIENCE IS PERSECUTION. 

Judge Taft, in giving his opinion in the Superior Court 
of Cincinnati, in the case of Minor et al ., vs. Board of Ed¬ 
ucation of Cincinnati, expressed his judgment as follows: 


12 


“We have this unequivocal evidence of the reality oi 
their conscientious scruples, that, when they have paid 
the school tax, which is not a light one, they give up the 
privilege of sending their children, rather than that the} 
should be educated in what they hold to be, and what, 
without the adoption of one or both of these resolutions, 
must be fairly held to be, Protestant schools. This is too 
large a circumstance to be covered up by the Latin phrase 
de minimis non curat lex, to which resort is sometimes had. 
These Catholics are constrained every year to yield to 
others their right to one-third of the school money, a sum 
of money averaging not less than $200,000, every year, 
on conscientious grounds. That is to say, these people 
are punished every year for believing as they do, to the 
extent of $200,000 ; and to that extent those of us who send 
our children to these excellent common schools become 
.beneficiaries of the Catholic money. We pay for our 
privileges so much less than they actually cost.” 

I quote this distinguished authority to justify the ex¬ 
ceedingly strong accusation made a moment ago. 

THE STATE HAS NO RIGHT TO EDUCATE. 

The Catholic, however, is equally unwilling to transfer 
the responsibility of the education of his children to the 
State. His conscience informs him that the State is an 
incompetent agent to fulfil his parental duties. While the 
whisperings of his conscience are clear and unmistakable 
in their dictates, it pleases him to hear what others, non- 
Catholics, have to say on this important aspect of the 
subject. 

The late Gerrit Smith, whose character as an able and 
fearless philanthropist I need not dwell on, in a letter of 
Nov. 5, 1873, to Chas. Stebbins, of Cazenovia, and in¬ 
tended for publication, says: “The meddling of the 


i3 


State with the school is an impertinence little less than 
its meddling with the church. A lawyer, than whom 
there is not an abler in the land, and who is as eminent 
for integrity as for ability, writes me: 1 1 am against the 
Government’s being permitted to do anything which can 
be intrusted to individuals under the equal regulation of 
general laws.’ But how emphatically should the school 
be held to be the concern and care of individuals instead 
of the Government! It is not extravagant to say that 
Government is no more entitled to a voice in the school 
than in the church. Both are, or ought to be, religious 
institutions; and in the one important respect that the 
average scholar is of a more plastic and docile age than 
the average attendant on the church, the school has 
greatly the advantage of the church.” 

The views of Gerritt Smith and of the Catholic parent 
coincide in a remarkable degree. 

HERBERT SPENCER ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 

Another authority will, I trust, be equally acceptable to 
my hearers. Herbert Spencer, in the chapter on National 
Education in “ Social Statics,” thus writes: “ In the same 
way that our definition of State duty forbids the State 
to administer religion or charity, so likewise does it forbid 
the State to administer education. Inasmuch, as the 
taking away by Government, of more of a man’s property 
than is needful for maintaining his rights, is an infringe¬ 
ment, and therefore a reversal of the Government’s function 
toward him, and inasmuch as the taking away of his 
property to educate his own or other people’s children is 
not needful for the maintaining of his rights, the taking 
away of his property is wrong.” Mr. Spencer then goes 
on to prove his proposition, and refute objections brought 
against it by various classes of objectors, thus: “The 


14 


reasoning which is held to establish the right to intellect¬ 
ual food, will equally well establish the right to material 
food ; nay, will do more, —will prove that children should 
be altogether cared for by the Government. For if the 
benefit, importance, or necessity of education be assigned 
as a sufficient reason why Government should educate, 
then may the benefit, importance, or necessity of food, 
clothing, shelter and warmth be assigned as a sufficient 
reason why Government should administer them also. So 
that the alleged right cannot be established without an¬ 
nulling all parental authority whatever.” The destruction 
of parental authority, and the uselessness of mere intel¬ 
lectual education as a preventive of crime, are the chief 
points he makes against State interference with schools. 

THE ‘‘JOURNAL OF COMMERCE ” ON THE SAME. 

“ The only remedy,” says the Journal of Commetxe of 
New York, “we see in the future for the evils which are 
admitted, is lo be found in the entire separation of the 
educational process from State authority. If this has 
been found wisest and best in matters of religion, why 
not in relation to all forms of education ? Youth needs 
the higher sanction of religion in every department of 
culture, and this cannot be secured in a State school 
where there is no State church.” 

It can scarcely be said that the interference or non¬ 
interference of the State in school education is an open 
question. By concession on the part of the large major¬ 
ity of the population, liberty to interfere is granted. This 
liberty in no way includes the right so to take part in the 
education of children that the just and inalienable rights 
of parents shall be sacrificed. I have dwelt on the argu¬ 
ment of parental rights because the assumption of the 
State to control education, and the indifference of many 


i5 


parents to this assumption, encourage the supposition that 
all the right is in the State and none in the parent. 

COMMON SCHOOLS BEGAN ON A RELIGIOUS BASIS. 

In the gradual establishment of State schools the ele¬ 
ment of religious instruction always had a place of honor. 
The Constitutions of your New England States, and in 
a very remarkable degree those of Massachusetts and 
Connecticut, recognize God, religion, virtue, and morality. 
The departure of modern methods has been from the old 
and sound ways of the founders of the Republic, both as 
respects the religious element in the education of the 
young, and the duty of parents to bear the burden of 
their children’s education. The Western States copied 
the Constitutions of the older States, and, like them, in¬ 
cluded morality and religion as essential parts of a sound 
education; but, falling into the prevailing error, learned 
to exclude God and religious instruction from their 
schools. 


HAS EDUCATION YET DECREASED CRIME? 

Now, hear their piteous lamentation: “Did not the 
advocates of our free school system,” says Mr. Hopkins, 
Superintendent of Schools in Indiana, “promise the peo¬ 
ple that if they would take on their shoulders the addi¬ 
tional burden of taxation for its support, the same would 
be lightened by the diminution of crime ? Is there any 
perceptible decrease of crime in Indiana? Is there any 
reasonable probability that there soon will be? It is be¬ 
coming a grave question among those who take compre¬ 
hensive views of the subject of education, whether this 
intellectual culture without moral is not rather an injury 
than a benefit. Is it not giving teeth to the lion and 
fangs to the serpent ? That is the true system of training 


i6 


which adapts itself to the entire complex nature of the 
child. No free government can safely ignore this grave 
subject, for nations that lose their virtue soon lose their 
freedom.” Here is a remarkable statement by a friendly 
pen in the hand of the chief official of the educational 
department of Indiana, whose testimony, therefore, must 
be admitted as of great weight. Mr. Hopkins has been 
reading the newspapers of the day, and, startled by the 
revelations of crime among the intellectual and educated 
classes, who use the advantages of school learning the 
better to defraud creditors, embezzle trust funds, rob 
banks, form conspiracies to cheat the government, and 
sell official honor for personal gain, is seeking some ex¬ 
planation of a condition of public and private morals 
that cannot continue without destroying the liberties of 
the Republic. He has hit on the right starting-point. 
Let him go on with his investigations, and fear not to dis¬ 
close his discoveries. 

WHAT IS SECULARISM? 

Our argument is now with the Secularists, pure and 
simple. They point to their work accomplished and bid 
us to the feast of rejoicing. We do not answer to the 
call, and stand ready to give the reason that is in us. 

What is meant by Secularism in schools ? President 
Grant defines it to mean the exclusion from the schools 
of the teaching of any religious, atheistic or pagan tenet. 
Evidently the President has never been a school-teacher, 
or has never tried to teach anything save the multiplica¬ 
tion table to a bright, intelligent boy, brought up in a 
Christian family, on the plan here laid down. Command¬ 
ing armies, handling a hundred thousand armed men, is 
child’s play in comparison. God, Christ, sin, conscience, 
religion, heaven, hell, would meet him at every turn, and 
to flank them successfully, without insinuating a Christian, 


i7 


a pagan, or an atheistic tendency of thought, would give 
him more trouble than he experienced in outflanking the 
strongest army that ever met him on his onward marches. 

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, a staunch and 
zealous defender of Secularism, gives its explanation as 
follows : “ Strictly speaking, a secular school should not 
inculcate the belief in an overruling Providence.” 

The teacher who honestly means to teach according to 
the principles of Secularism will find himself in contin¬ 
ual embarrassment. If he but mentions the name of 
God, of Christ, with reverence, he leads his bright pupils 
to infer that such a Being exists ; if he evades a question 
about God, he indicates doubt; if he speaks the name 
with a sneer on the lip, or a shrug of the shoulders, he 
inculcates to young, impressible minds his contempt for 
such a belief. Secularists must not attempt to escape the 
logic of their own demands. They ask, in the language 
of the President, the exclusion of all religious, atheistic 
and pagan tenets from State schools; and where this doc¬ 
trine lands them, they must be pleased to stand. They 
scout the idea that merely excluding the Bible means Sec¬ 
ularism. This is the vain hope of Evangelicals, and that 
with this concession they will be left free to make compi¬ 
lations from the Bible — elegant extracts — to keep up 
appearances. They do not comprehend the nature of the 
controversy. The dread of “popery” blinds them. They 
will not be let off without swallowing in all its bitterness 
this pill which they have helped prepare. 

EVANGELICALS OBJECT TO THE TERM 11 GODLESS.” 

Yet some Evangelical friends have been wrathy with 
me and others for designating the common schools, ac¬ 
cording to the new law, as godless. I do not wish them 
to be godless; it is not the fault of Catholics that they 



are becoming godless. To leave our non-Catholic fellow- 
citizens free to settle the question of religious instruction 
in the schools to their own satisfaction, Catholics all over 
the country have provided, or they are providing, school 
accommodation for Catholic children, that the religious 
influences in these schools may be in harmony with the 
religious convictions of their patrons. Hardly had we 
made room in our own schools for all our Catholic chil¬ 
dren in the city of Rochester than the Board of Educa¬ 
tion of the city, with little ceremony, put the Bible and 
all religious instruction out of the public schools. It was 
this Board that made the schools under their care, in re¬ 
ality, if not in name, godless. 

LIBERAL CHRISTIANS AND SECULARISTS. 

The liberal Christian, led on by Henry Ward Beecher 
and a large body of clergymen of various Evangelical de¬ 
nominations, fancies that morals can be taught like good 
manners, on no higher ground or motive than the one 
of propriety or expediency. When interest, passion, the 
heart’s cravings, outweigh propriety and expediency, 
morals thus taught go by the board. 

The Free Religionist is at least consistent: consistency 
is more than the liberal Evangelical Christian can 
claim. The former rejects the idea of a God-Creator, 
revelation and all supernatural truths. He is justified in 
asking that his child shall not have its mind tinctured 
with such errors during school hours. He is resolute to 
drive out of the schools which he is taxed to support, and 
to which he sends his children, the sectarianism of Evan¬ 
gelicalism ; and he is equally determined to plant in them 
his pet doctrine, the sectarianism of Secularism. It is 
the usual reading of history that bodies of religionists 
never see themselves as others see them. 


19 


The religionist, Catholic and Christian, holding to di¬ 
vine and fixed truths, claims the right to impart a knowl¬ 
edge of these truths to his child in the school to which he 
sends it for education. The Free Religionist, having no 
such truths to communicate to his child, insists that his 
fellow-citizen shall not be allowed to use the schoolhouse 
for instruction in positive religion, because he sends his 
child to the same school. Thus, practically, he ostra¬ 
cizes the religion of the Christian, which is positive, and 
maintains his own, which is negative. All the gain is on 
the side of the Free Religionist, whose system of morals 
is so transcendental, and out of the reach of the masses, 
that it is valueless for practical good. Both call for the 
teaching of morals, and each in his own sense. The 
Evangelical bases his notions of morality on the natural 
and revealed law; the Free Religionist, or Secularist 
pure and simple, on the natural law, and as he conceives 
it. The latter would exclude the sacred Scriptures and 
all positive religious teaching from the schools. Evan¬ 
gelicals are divided into two classes. One class would 
retain the Bible as a text-book of instruction in morals, 
as a sign of the Christianity of the schools, and as a 
mode of religious worship. They argue with much truth 
that if, owing to the neglect of parents at home, the in¬ 
sufficiency of the Sunday-school and church to reach the 
children most in need of religious teaching, it be not im¬ 
parted in the week-day school, it will never be imparted. 
Another class of Evangelicals remit the Bible and all 
teaching of morals on religious grounds to the family, the 
Sunday-school and the church, and join hands with the 
Free Religionists in prohibiting the name of God, of 
Christ, and of his teachings in the school. The least log¬ 
ical is this liberalized Christian Evangelical, who pro¬ 
fesses to teach morals without the authority in which he 
claims to believe. There is some justification for the 


20 


stand taken by the former class of Evangelicals and by 
Free Religionists ; there is none for the position assumed 
by Evangelicals who hold principles by which they care 
not to abide. The liberalized Christian and the Free 
Religionist assert that to be possible which, in the nature 
of things, is not possible. The teacher does not exist, 
who, in his schoolroom, can so divest himself of his own 
religious or irreligious ideas that no influence, direct or 
indirect, shall go out from him to his pupils. His very 
best efforts to escape the suspicion of sectarianism will 
only serve to tinge his teaching with indifferentism 
toward all religion; thus unintentionally, perhaps, respond¬ 
ing to the wishes of the Free Religionist. Scudding 
from Scylla, he is wrecked on Charybdis, or vice versa. 

On what ground, we may now ask, does either protest 
against the peculiar religious teachings of the other in 
State Schools ? Both are shocked that their taxes should 
be used to propagate religious creeds in which they do 
not believe. Neither has a word to say about the wrong 
perpetrated on the Catholic, whose taxes are used with¬ 
out stint to carry on a system of schools, from which he 
is kept out by their dominant Evangelicalism or indiffer¬ 
entism. 


A TRIANGULAR CONTEST. 

Thus, as some declare, a triangular contest is inaugu¬ 
rated. The Albany Argus, of Nov. 30, 1875, in reviewing 
a sermon of the Rev. Dr. Darling, in which the reverend 
doctor insists on keeping the Bible in the common schools, 
and because this is a Christian country, remarks : “ Who 
shall decide ? Shall the schools be secularized ? Shall 
they be exclusively Christian, after the Darling model ? 
Shall room be allowed for the McQuaid pattern of 
schools pervaded by Christian influences? The School 
Question, then, does not bisect the community. It is a 


21 


triangular contest, with the Darlings and McQuaids as 
allies and yet as antagonists; and with the Secularists 
receiving strong support from Protestant pulpits, beside 
the partial support they receive from arguments such as 
are advanced by Dr. Darling.” Three parties there are 
beyond doubt, but the contest can scarcely be called tri¬ 
angular. It is rather a struggle of three in one line, with 
the Catholic party in the middle. Each of the others 
has a hand in his pocket, taking his money to support 
schools to which he cannot in conscience send his chil¬ 
dren. If he but opens his mouth to complain, a din of 
angry sounds deafens him, and he gets more knocks than 
pence. His right to a conscience is admitted when his 
conscience conforms to the dictates of others. A few 
years ago his claim of conscientious convictions on the 
Bible question was derided. Now it is allowed. To-day 
he claims to educate his child in schools in harmony 
with his religious convictions. Neither contending party 
gives him heed. All point to the common schools, and 
while quarreling among themselves as to what they are, 
and what they ought to be, bid him take them as they 
are and as they have made them, or go his way, build his 
own schoolhouse, and please himself. This is moderate 
language; rougher and much less civil is what he hears. 
Strange to tell, however, no word is said of sending after 
him his money paid in school taxes. The ordinary prin¬ 
ciples of commercial honor are disregarded. The jus¬ 
tice and equity required by the Constitution of Connect¬ 
icut are ignored. Instead of justice the Catholic receives 
insults. “ His money ! It is the State’s money — public 
money belonging to the State treasury — Protestant mon¬ 
ey. Be thankful that a generous people permits you to 
be blessed by the school advantages brought to your 
door. ” 


22 


WHO PAYS THE SCHOOL TAXES? 

Thus the poor Catholic, who may, perchance, have a 
little common sense, hears, in the midst of loud talk about 
rights of man and rights of conscience, that his con¬ 
science is not his own, and the freedom offered him is 
somebody else’s freedom; that his school taxes take on 
a special Protestant blessing as they drop into the com¬ 
mon treasury, and may not come out without the odor of 
Evangelicalism perfuming them. In downright derision 
he is asked, what taxes he pays ? is he not a poor la¬ 
borer without a home he can call his own ? a mere ten¬ 
ant-at-will ? are not the taxes paid by the rich landlord ? 
Simple and guileless the son of toil may be, and untutored 
in political economy, the laws of demand and supply, 
the intricacies of direct and indirect taxation, but his 
memory reminds him, that when last the landlord called, 
he was told that as taxes and assessments had been so 
much increased, a trifle would have to be added to the 
rent. The same unpleasant remark met him in the gro¬ 
cery, the meat-shop, the shoe-store, wherever, indeed, he 
went to purchase the simplest necessaries of life. Anx¬ 
ious to learn how it was that the taxes had been aug¬ 
mented, he talked with his neighbors, and after many in¬ 
quiries discovered that new and costly schoolhouses had 
been built, salaries of teachers and officials had been add¬ 
ed to, and the sum of incidentals grown out of all propor¬ 
tion. A further study of the subject revealed the fact 
that one-fourth of all moneys raised by taxes in his town 
was needed for public schools. He then learnt why his 
rent was raised. He was not so dull that he could not 
comprehend, after the practical experience thus obtained, 
that the consumer and producer pay the taxes. The 
landlord, the manufacturer, the seller, draws the check in 
payment of the tax bill; but the consumer and producer 


23 

furnish a large part of the money with which to make 
good the check. 

FALSE STATEMENTS AND ASSUMPTIONS. 

This subject of State school education is overloaded 
with unfounded assumptions and incorrect statements. 
A prominent public man, clergyman, politician, or editor 
has scarcely given utterance to a plausible plea, when, by 
the grand chorus of lesser oracles, it is taken up and re¬ 
peated, until it sounds like an accepted axiom. 

WHAT IS SECTARIANISM? 

The greatest abuse of language is in the popular mean¬ 
ing of the word “ sectarian.” On the frenzied brain of 
many it acts like the cry of “ mad dog,” in a crowded 
street. Who inquires into its signification ? Light 
thrown on it would only weaken its power for mischief. 
The analyzation of the word by John C. Spencer, Secre¬ 
tary of the State of New York, and one of the ablest law¬ 
yers the State has produced, dissects it thoroughly, and 
exposes the erroneous sense in which it is used. After 
saying that “ Religious doctrines of vital interest will be 
inculcated, not as theological exercises, but incidentally, 
in the course of literary and scientific instructions,” and 
that such teachings are sectarian, he goes on to say : “It 
is believed to be an error to suppose that the absence of 
all religious instruction, if it were practicable, is a mode 
of avoiding sectarianism. On the contrary, it would be 
in itself sectarian, because it would be consonant to the 
views of a particular class, and opposed to the opinions 

of other classes.His only purpose is to shpw 

the mistake of those who suppose they may avoid secta¬ 
rianism by avoiding all religious instruction.” 


24 


INCONSISTENCY OF THE EVANGELICAL. 

Great confusion of ideas, and grievous injustice result 
from this misapprehension of the sense of sectarianism. 
No one declaims so loudly against sectarianism as your 
intensely religious Evangelical. Even when demanding 
that the Bible shall be read, and that his general form of 
Protestantism shall fill the schoolhouse, by some obliquity 
of mental vision peculiar to his class, he startles the 
country by his frantic cries of danger to the public 
schools through sectarianism. Is this honest, or is it 
hypocritical? If the prejudices in which he was born 
and bred so confuse and blind his intellect that he can¬ 
not see a self-evident truth, his blunder may be charged 
to mistaken honesty. But what accumulated injustices 
spring out of his blunder! 

BENIGNITY OF THE SECULARIST. 

Then up rises the Secularist, with benign countenance 
and gentle words, to reprove the Evangelical for wrong 
done to the poor Catholic sectarian, and in the name of 
peace and conciliation, and as a settlement of all difficul¬ 
ties, to offer his gift of Secularism, pure and simple. It 
is not courteous to examine gifts too closely, but as this 
one is bought partly with Catholic money, it must be 
borne with, that, before accepting the present, the Catho¬ 
lic turns it round on every side, scrutinizes its shape, its 
color, and its substance, to make sure that in it no danger 
lurks concealed. To the Catholic Secularism is as much 
sectarian as Evangelicalism. 

an American’s right to agitate. 

A false statement, and one daily heard, is that to ask 
for a calm talk on the merits and demerits of the existing 


2 5 


system of schools, means no less than an attempt to favor 
ignorance, impede education, and break down all schools. 
It is an American’s right to argue, find fault, discuss, ag¬ 
itate. Agitation is healthful; in this particular instance, 
it quickens the building of Catholic schoolhouses. A 
Catholic is the last one to be taunted with want of love 
for education. He has only to point to his schools dot¬ 
ting the country from the Atlantic to the Pacific. All 
other classes put together do not equal him in the num¬ 
ber and efficiency of Christian Free Schools. Yet he is 
only at the beginning of his work. 

NO DANGER FROM THE POPE. 

Another incorrect statement is, that to allow parental 
rights, as demanded by the natural, the divine, and the 
common law, is to hand over the country to the Pope and 
the Catholic Church. When the bigots of the country 
will permit the Government to deal with its citizens, the 
parents of the children, as equity and justice require, the 
liberties of the Republic will meet no danger from the 
Catholic Church, or the Pope. It is this bugbear of “ po¬ 
pery, ” which bewilders and frightens people. 

EXTENT OF COMMON SCHOOL EDUCATION. 

It is not decided what is meant by a common-school 
education. It is anything from A B C up to a finished 
university course, including professional studies, except 
theology. President Grant restricts it to the rudimenta¬ 
ry branches of learning. President Eliot of Harvard 
University, in the Atlantic Monthly of last June, makes 
this statement: “ Suppose, for example, that the State re¬ 
quires of all children a certain knowledge of reading, 
writing, arithmetic and geography, such as children usu¬ 
ally acquire by the time they are twelve years of age. It 


26 


is not unreasonable, though by no means necessary, that 
the community should bear the whole cost of giving air 
children that amount of elementary training, on the 
ground that so much is necessary for the safety of the 
State; but when the education of a child is carried above 
that compulsory limit, it is by the voluntary act of the 
child’s parents, and the benefit accrues partly to the 
State, through the increase of trained intelligence among 
the population, but partly also to the individual, through 
the improvement of his powers and prospects .” 

Many of the secular newspapers agree with the above 
authorities in limiting a common school education to the 
simplest elementary branches. Such a restricted educa¬ 
tion. answers for rural districts in which a more extended 
course of studies is impossible. Tie down the curricu¬ 
lum of studies to the rudimentary branches of reading, 
writing, arithmetic and geography in villages, towns, and 
cities, and, in ten years’ time the system of common 
schools will be abandoned. The ambition of all centres 
of papulation is to elevate the standard of common school 
education, until the town that cannot boast of its Gram¬ 
mar School, and its High School or day-College, drops 
behind its sister towns in the race for advanced education 
at the public expense. The Normal School, with its pre¬ 
tentious title, is another device for placing within the 
reach of large numbers, guiltless of any thought of fol¬ 
lowing the teacher’s profession, an education such as in 
former years could be had only in denominational acade¬ 
mies and seminaries. To such an extent has this crowd¬ 
ing out of academies and seminaries, generally under de¬ 
nominational control and' supported by church organiza¬ 
tions and private patrons, gone on, by the substitution of 
Union Schools, High Schools, Normal Schools, Free Col¬ 
leges, living on the bounty of the common treasury, that 
many denominational institutions have ceased to live, 
and others are only gasping for breath. 


27 


UNLIMITED EXPANSION OF THE SYSTEM. 

Let us listen to two other authorities giving their opin¬ 
ion of the scope of common school studies. Henry 
Ward Beecher may be pitted against President Grant, and 
Superintendent Philbrick, of Boston, against President * 
Eliot. “ The common schools,” says Mr. Beecher, 

“ should be so comfortable, so fat, so rich, so complete, 
that no select school could live under their drippings.” 

In his annual report for 1874, Mr. Philbrick writes : “ Our 
public schools are maintained on so liberal a scale, and 
their influence so largely predominates, that the private 
schools exert no appreciable effect upon their character.” 
Boston has its system of Latin Schools, Normal Schools, 
Pligh Schools, Grammar Schools, to demonstrate the ab¬ 
surdity of President Grant’s expectation that the rudi¬ 
mentary branches would satisfy the American people. 
Mr. Philbrick gives statistics to show that while in 1830 
there were in Boston 7430 children in the public schools, 
there were in private schools 4018 ; but in 1873, with an 
addition of 200,000 to the population, there were in the 
public schools, 35,930, and in private schools only 3887. 
Neither enumeration includes the 5000 children in 
Christian Free Schools supported by parents of the 
Catholic religion. 


WHY THEY DIFFER. 

When the aim of the argument is to catch popular ap¬ 
plause, we boast of a system of schools that brings to 
every child in the land a knowledge of the rudimentary 
branches of learning. When we wish to conciliate and 
win the patronage of well-to-do citizens in cities and 
towns, we impress on their minds the economy of obtain¬ 
ing superior education, including ancient and modern 
languages and all the accomplishments, under the State 


28 


arrangement rather than in private schools. The Public 
School system, as advocated by many to be imposed on 
all the citizens of this Republic, is nothing else, in my 
judgment, than a huge conspiracy against religion, indi- 
* vidual liberty and enterprise, and parental rights. It is 
a monopoly on the part of the State, usurping to itself 
the entire control of the teacher’s business, driving out 
competition, herding the children together in large num¬ 
bers, working all alike as so many bits of machinery, — 
instead of having them in smaller family and neighbor¬ 
hood schools, acting on the children according to individ¬ 
ual character, by teachers more immediately under the 
control of parents. 

Various causes work to push school taxation to an un¬ 
bearable degree. Friends of common schools, taking ad¬ 
vantage of popular sympathy, urge outlays of money for 
houses, apparatus, books, novelties of every kind, and in¬ 
creased salaries of teachers, so that tax-payers are at last 
asking to know what was the original contract, and where 
these enormous expenditures are to end ; they are also 
looking for results and comparing notes with other coun¬ 
tries. Mr. Philbrick of Boston, when in Vienna, did not 
discover that our lavish disbursement of good-natured 
people’s money had given us a high rank in school pro¬ 
gress, as compared with European countries, except in 
our primary schools. 

COSTLINESS OF COMMON SCHOOLS. 

But business men long ago learned that no job was so 
expensive as a government job, and no wonder that they 
are now turning their attention to this monopoly of State 
education, as a financial interest of general and deep con¬ 
cern in these hard times. There are others who can give 
figures and statistics of school work beside State and City 
Superintendents of public schools. The Cincinnati cor- 


29 


respondent of the New York Daily Bulletin , a paper 
strictly commercial, writes under date of Jan. 17, 1876 : — 
“ Our schools, the best of our institutions, represent, for in¬ 
stance, fully as much miseducation as education ; and the 
Boards having charge of them are, compared with other bod¬ 
ies, least regardful of proper economy, because they act under 
a popular, and therefore the least analyzed, public feeling. If 
you will examine, you will find that, of all taxes, school taxes 
have for that reason increased fastest. Compare our school 
expenses with those of any German State, and you will find 
that ours cost more and perform least. The heaviest taxed 
German State for these purposes is Hesse Cassel; it taxes 34 
cents per head, and it makes up 7 1-2 per cent, of all the tax¬ 
es levied. Now, there are levied for school purposes in Cin¬ 
cinnati, $774,894, which is full $2.50 per head, and is about 
one-sixth of all the taxes, or 16 per cent. In Hesse Cassel 
the tax includes libraries, universities and art schools ; with 
us it includes only the schools up to high schools, and a 
good part of their expense is borne by trust funds. As to the 
culture, the German schools reach a larger proportion of the 
youth of the State, and is very thorough from the lowest to 
the highest grade, the teachers being much better qualified 
than ours. Had I taken Saxony or Baden, both more eco¬ 
nomical and efficient than Hesse Cassel, the comparison 
would have been still more against us. Zurich, the highest 
taxed city in Europe for these objects, takes but 54 cents 
per head, and there school taxes are one-fifth of all taxes ; but 
there also it includes libraries, a university, polytechnicism, 
lyceums and common schools; and surely no city on earth 
has a superior culture than this city.” 

Strongly as this writer puts his case, he fails to do it 
justice ; for he omits to state that more than half the chil¬ 
dren of the city in schools are in parents’ schools, or de¬ 
nominational and private schools. In New York City 
school taxes are $4.00 per head for each one of its million 
inhabitants ; and large numbers of its children are in 
other than State schools. Boston, which has a less num- 


30 


ber of pupils in private and religious schools, shows a 
marked increase in the per capita cost. In 1873, for 
teachers and incidental expenses, not including new 
schoolhouses, the cost per head of its 250,000 inhabitants 
was $5.52 ; and including the buildings, it reached nearly 
$7. These figures are for tax-payers. 

Let me say to you just here, that if the scheme of 
higher education extending from the elementary school 
up to a full university course, now broached, is attempted 
to be carried out in its fulness and universality, all the 
revenues of all your cities, towns and states, and all the 
revenues of these United States would not suffice to pay 
the cost. 

Intelligent, wise, earnest parents, and friends of sound 
education, will watch with interest the gradual unfolding 
and development of the State system of schools. Their 
attention will be given to this crushing out of denomina¬ 
tional schools for the humbler classes of society, to see 
in it the inexorable destruction of all denominational sem¬ 
inaries, academies, colleges and universities. 

STATE COLLEGES TO CRUSH OUT DENOMINATIONAL COL¬ 
LEGES. 

This policy is foreshadowed in the proposed National 
University scheme. I am not drawing inferences from my 
imagination. The address of President White of Cornell 
University, delivered at Detroit, in August, 1874, lacks 
nothing in openness and directness of speech. Among 
other points, it contains these: “It is in view of such a 
meagre growth in over two hundred years, under the pre¬ 
vailing system, that I present the following as the funda¬ 
mental proposition ,of this paper : — 

“ The mam provision for advanced education in the United 
Slates must be made by the people at large , acting through 


3i 


their National and State Legislature , to endow and maintain 
institutions for the higher instruction, fully equipped and free 
from sectarian control. 

11 But I argue next, that our existing public-school system 
leads us logically and necessarily to the endowment of ad¬ 
vanced instruction .” 

To show his utter contempt for the rudimentary educa¬ 
tion called for by President Grant, Mr. White thus ex¬ 
presses his conviction: “ The preliminary education 
which many of our strongest men received leaves them 
simply beasts of prey. It has simply sharpened their 
claws and tusks ; but a higher education, whether in sci¬ 
ence, literature, or history, not only sharpens the facul¬ 
ties, but gives him new exemplars and ideals.” President 
White and Herbert Spencer both require very advanced 
education before morals, under this new dispensation, 
avail to make a man better. 

NO COLLEGES BUT STATE COLLEGES. 

Mr. White’s address is not a string of propositions and 
arguments without conclusions. Here is one : — 

“Next, as to State policy, I would have it go in the same 
direction as heretofore, but with a liberality and steadiness 
showing far more foresight. I would have each of those 
States build up higher, upon the foundations laid by national 
grants, their public institutions for advanced instruction as 
distinguished from private sectarian institutions. 

“ I would have each State build up one institution under its 
control, rather than the twenty under the control of confer¬ 
ences, and dioceses, and synods, and consistories, and pres¬ 
byteries, and denominational associations of various sects.” 

There can be no mistake about the learned President’s 
meaning, nor is one denominational organization omitted 
from his comprehensive catalogue. He advocates Secu¬ 
larism, pure and simple, in our colleges and universities, 


32 


paid for by taxes levied on the laborers, mechanics, and 
farmers of the country. He excludes from State aid all 
institutions in which any religious tenet, even the exist¬ 
ence of an overruling Providence, is taught. If, on the 
establishment of these secular State colleges, their au¬ 
thorities should permit the reading of the Bible, as a book 
of spiritual or religious truths of more value than the Ko¬ 
ran, it will be the cheerful duty of the Liberal League to 
protest against the abuse and infraction of the law, as the 
League protested in Philadelphia, “ The use of the Bible 
in the public schools is a violation of the recognized 
American principle that the State and Church ought to 
be absolutely separate.” 

HOW WILL THE EVANGELICALS LIKE IT? 

What will the members of the New England Baptist 
Educational Convention, assembled in Worcester, Mass., 
who recommended the establishment of at least one Acad¬ 
emy under Baptist control in each of the New England 
States, say to this arrangement ? What will their breth¬ 
ren assembled in Chicago, and representing the Western 
States, think of it ? How will the Southern Baptists who 
met in Marion, Ala., and who declared that “the only 
hope is Christian education in our schools/’ like a policy 
destined to overshadow and destroy denominational High 
Schools, Academies, and Colleges, as it destroyed denomi¬ 
national elementary schools? These three conventions 
were held in 1871. President Andrews, of Denison Univer¬ 
sity, Ohio, has the advantage of four years’ experience and 
observation since the holding of these conventions. He 
has seen the clouds gathering; he has heard the mutter- 
ings of the brewing storm ; the signs in the heavens tell 
him, that, when that storm bursts, it will be over the heads 
of denominational Colleges. “The proposed reform,” 
says President Andrews, “will involve religious compli- 


33 


cations. Higher education cannot be separated from re¬ 
ligion. Atheists will not pay taxes to support theistic in¬ 
struction, nor theists atheistic. But to put higher in¬ 
struction into the hands of the government is not only 
impolitic, but wrong in principle. . . . The govern¬ 

ment should hold the same relation to higher education 
that it does to religion. Further, religion is essential to 
higher culture, and the State cannot teach religion. It is 
injustice to those opposed to Christianity. Christianity 
is the natural ally of culture. Finally, intellectual culture 
without religion cannot build character. The great need 
of the nation is moral force. The divorce of culture and re¬ 
ligion is forced and unnatural.” Does President Andrews 
hope to avert the storm by his weak voice? Does he 
dream of holding the inner line of fortifications, protect¬ 
ing his higher education, after abandoning to the enemy 
all the outposts ? When elementary schools, in which the 
foundation of sound Christian morals is laid, were given 
over to Secularists at their first bidding, resistance to the 
advancing foe became impossible. 

WHAT THE METHODISTS THINK. 

In 1873, the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the quad¬ 
rennial address of its bishops, thus put itself on record: 
“ We do not hesitate to avow that we regard the educa¬ 
tion of the young as one of the leading functions of the 
Church, and that she cannot abdicate in favor of the 
State without infidelity to her trust and irreparable dam¬ 
age to society. The reasons for occupying this ground, 
which inhere in the very nature of this interest, and in 
the relation of children to the Church, all are intensified 
by the antagonism of modern science, and the out-casting 
of the religious element from all the school systems fos¬ 
tered by State legislation. It is not ours to dispute with 
Caesar; but, fully persuaded that the salt of religious 


34 


truth alone can preserve education, we feel that the re¬ 
sponsibilities of the Church grow with the progress of so¬ 
ciety and the demands of the age.” 

WHAT MAKES THE METHODISTS CRAZY. 

Other authorities of high standing in the Methodist de¬ 
nomination might be cited in favor of religious teaching 
in schools. It is but fair to state that the mention of any 
system of schools under which common justice might be 
meted out to Catholic parents, suffices to drive the whole 
body of Methodist preachers and hearers frantic, crazy. 
The Baptists are not much less intolerant. Secularists 
may therefore count on their assistance in ousting from 
the schools the very name of the Christians’ God. The 
professed principles of these religious sects avail nothing 
against their avowed hatred of the Catholic Church and 
Catholics. 

WHO SUPPORT CHURCHES ? 

The various Evangelical sects yielded up the contest 
for religious education in common schools almost without 
a struggle. It is said that the children, whose education 
is not advanced beyond the elementary branches of learn¬ 
ing, do not in time become pew-holders and supporters 
of churches. These efficient aids to church support are 
found in the classes which pass through denominational 
schools of a higher grade. Round these all the forces of 
Evangelicalism will rally to uphold the right of parents of 
the respectable class to provide religious education for 
their children. Certainly the zeal, the labors, the munif¬ 
icent generosity, of the Evangelical denominations to 
build and endow Academies and Colleges, deserve un¬ 
bounded praise. But when the State opens its plethoric 
treasury to establish secular Colleges, with allowances of 
freedom not possible in sectarian institutions, the struggle 


35 

will be short and decisive. This is not prophecy: it is 
history. 


WHAT KILLS EVANGELICAL COLLEGES? 

The once flourishing Methodist College at Lima, N.Y., 
dwindled to insignificance, and moved to Syracuse to 
escape death, shortly after the opening of Cornell Uni¬ 
versity. About the same time, Hobart College, under 
the control of the Episcopal Church, began to lose stu¬ 
dents, until now, notwithstanding large endowments, the 
fingers of the two hands would almost suffice to count 
them. The Presbyterian Seminary of Geneseo closed its 
doors when a State Normal School in the same village 
opened its classes. The Baptist Academy of Brockport 
became a State Normal School to escape death. Other 
places have the same history. The atmosphere of these 
Normal Schools is still redolent with evangelicalism, but it 
is only on sufferance ; at the first demand of Jew or athe¬ 
ist the names of God, Creator, and Christ will be ban¬ 
ished, praying and hymn-singing stopped. 

I now leave Evangelical Christians to ponder over 
President Grant’s demand that no religious tenet shall 
be taught in State schools, and this new definition of 
non-sectarianism. 

SECULARISTS ARE IN GREAT GLEE 

over their progress. They look forward to speedy and 
complete success. Their victory in common schools car¬ 
ries them triumphantly along to State secular Universities. 
Indeed, they might begin their song of triumph, if not 
for complete accomplishment, then for rapid advance¬ 
ment. Only one foe stands undismayed before them. 
It is the Catholic parent who permits no one to come be¬ 
tween him and his child. The father is a Christian, 


36 

prizing his faith more than his purse or the world’s es¬ 
teem ; resolute to transmit to his offspring the precious 
boon of religion in its purity and brightness, undimmed 
by the jeers and scoffs and calumnies of unbelievers ; he 
will not permit his children to breathe an atmosphere of 
infidelity. Others may think and say that he is wrong : 
he knows that he is right. He meddles not with others. 
He listens to much counsel from well-meaning friends. 
They tell him it is a glorious privilege for his boy to be 
the equal and companion of a rich man’s son. It may 
happen — it often happens — that he cares no more for 
the rich man’s son than for the rich man himself. They 
point to the palatial schoolhouse, grand and gorgeous in 
all its appointments ; to the teachers, learned and accom¬ 
plished. They tell him all these shall his son enjoy, 
without price or pay, if he will but intrust his boy’s edu¬ 
cation to the State, which loves to play foster-father to its 
children. The poor man’s poverty gnaws into the bone 
under the proffered bribe; his mind dwells on the tem¬ 
poral advantages so enticingly offered; he loves his 
child, and he believes in an overruling Providence, a 
God, Creator, Supreme Master of the universe; he be¬ 
lieves in a world to come, and cherishes the hope that, 
after this life, he and his boy shall be reunited with the 
blessed in heaven. Under the coarse coat and rough ex¬ 
terior of many a day-laborer there beats a heart of hon¬ 
est manliness that would scorn to be the beneficiary of 
any man’s aid. He pays for his child’s education ; he 
hates to pay for a superior education for his richer neigh¬ 
bor’s son. There is a laudable pride in this spirit of in¬ 
dependence and self-reliance, the very virtues upon which 
the Republic depends for its existence. 

He can conceive of no true happiness except as his 
life conforms to the teachings and will of his God. His 
thoughts of happiness for himself are bound up with 


37 


those of his child. His child’s happiness for this world 
and the next interests and determines his actions at 
home, in its play, in school, and in church. He is con¬ 
cerned about its lessons, but still more about every influ¬ 
ence bearing on the direction and formation of mind and 
character. Like Herbert Spencer, he knows that mere 
intellectual education will not form character; and, like 
President White, he holds that the preliminary education 
which many receive “ only sharpens claws and tusks, and 
makes beasts of prey.” To guard against such dangers, 
this father, whose religion is real and living, made up of 
doctrines to be known and believed, and of observances 
and practices to be faithfully followed, dares not before 
God and his conscience neglect to train his son in these 
observances, make him familiar with their use, and fill his 
mind and soul with love and reverence toward them. 
How will it be with his boy, if the school fail to come to 
his aid, or, what is worse, operate disastrously, by posi¬ 
tive or negative teaching, upon his soul ? What will be 
the future of that boy if the atmosphere he breathes at 
school be filled with doubt, sneers, negation ? There is 
not in this audience one father, who, if he believed in a 
life to come, of happiness or misery eternal, would take 
any unnecessary chances with regard to his child’s edu¬ 
cation and school life. If you judge the rest of the 
world only from your standpoint of belief, the brave 
struggle of a Catholic poor man to obtain a Christian ed¬ 
ucation for his child will continue to be an enigma, and 
lead to acts of injustice. 

AGREEMENTS AND DISAGREEMENTS. 

Catholics and Secularists agree on some points, and 
differ on others. 

They agree that education is an important factor in the 
making of an intelligent citizen, and is therefore very de- 


33 

sirable. They do not agree in the character of the edu¬ 
cation necessary to make this good citizen. The Catho¬ 
lic points to his personal sacrifices in time, labor, and 
money, to secure for his children education in the sense 
in which he understands it. The Secularist bids us look 
at what the State has done for him. He cannot demon¬ 
strate the earnestness and sincerity of his convictions 
and preaching by what he has done. He pays, it is true, 
his share of public taxes. So does the Catholic. The 
Secularist insists that there shall be State schools after 
his plan, according to his convictions, paid for by taxa¬ 
tion from which no one shall be exempt, while all shall 
be obliged to drink at his well of knowledge, such as it 
is. A Catholic argues that the Secularist’s notion of ed¬ 
ucation was never strong, never attained to the power of 
a principle, or he would have withdrawn his children from 
schools in which they were taught what he might be 
pleased to call the superstitions of Evangelicalism. As 
between the two, on the head of personal sacrifices in fur¬ 
therance of the cause of education, the Catholic has an 
advantage over the Secularist in demonstrating the cour¬ 
age of his convictions. 

Both agree that instruction in morals in some form is 
essential for the right education of youth. They differ 
in their understanding of what is meant by morals, and as 
to the authority by which such teaching should be incul¬ 
cated. The Secularist rises no higher in his conception 
of morals than the temporal well-being of the child, and 
“the doing of acts conducive to general enjoyment.” 
Rev. A. D. Mayo, Unitarian minister, calls this policy “a 
materialistic naturalism and a philosophical fatalism.” 

SECULARISTS TEACHING MORALS. 

The helplessness of the Secularist as a teacher of the 
people is best described by Herbert Spencer in “First 


39 


Principles:” “Few, if any, are as yet fitted wholly to dis¬ 
pense with such (religious) conceptions as are current. 
The highest abstractions take so great a mental power to 
realize with any vividness, and are so inoperative on con¬ 
duct unless they are vividly realized, that their regulative 
effects must, for a long period to come, be appreciable on 
but a small minority. . . . Those who relinquish the 

faith in which they have been brought up, for this most 
abstract faith in which religion and science unite, may not 
uncommonly fail to act up to their convictions. Left to 
their organic morality, enforced only by general reason¬ 
ings imperfectly wrought out and difficult to keep before 
the mind, their defects of nature will often come out more 
strongly than they would have done under their previous 
creed.” No one is better entitled to a hearing on the 
side of the Secularists than Herbert Spencer. How far 
they are able to provide a code of morals for the training 
of the young in substitution of that of the Christian re¬ 
ligion, he has clearly stated. The child accepts its les¬ 
sons in science and morals on authority. The Secularist 
child has no other authority than that of the teacher, sup¬ 
plemented and enforced by its parents. Hence the ne¬ 
cessity of harmony of thought between parent and 
teacher. But “moral goodness,” to be effective even in 
the Secularist’s idea, demands vividness of conception 
beyond the power of attainment on the part of children, 
since few of their parents can rise to its realization. In 
other words, the teaching of morals in a Secularist’s 
school is all but impossible. 

STANDARDS OF MORALS DIFFER. 

The Secularist’s standard of morals differs in material 
points from that of the Catholic. The former, in admit¬ 
ting the law of divorce, consents to a disruption of ties 
that alone guarantee the sacredness and unity of the fam- 


40 


ily; permits passion, pleasure, and self-will to have their 
way in defiance of that law of self-restraint and patience 
under trials and difficulties necessary to hold the family 
together, at least for the children’s sake. The Catholic 
can address the Secularist in the words of the eloquent 
Bishop of Orleans: “It is not so much my church which 
they would destroy as your home; and I defend it. For 
all those things which are the supreme objects of your 
desire, — reason, philosophy, society, the basis of your 
institutions, the subject of your books, the sanctity of 
your hearts, the morals of your children, — these are the 
things which I defend, and which you throw away in 
crowning those who would destroy them.” 

A Catholic’s code of morals embraces the teachings 
of the Bible, interpreted by the Church. It does not end 
with teachings: it has ordinances, sacraments divinely 
instituted to give grace, supernatural power, with which 
to resist temptation, overcome passion, escape from sin. 
Your denial of these truths does not lessen a Catholic’s 
faith in them, nor weaken his conscience with regard to 
them. 

You may remember Henry Ward Beecher’s last 
Thanksgiving sermon, and the picture he drew of the 
condition of morals in the Brooklyn schools, in which 
were teachers who held their positions by the sacrifice of 
their virtue to School-Commissioners. You may also 
have heard that Thomas W. Field, Superintendent of 
schools in the same city of Brooklyn, in his annual re¬ 
port of four or five years ago, gave a fearful account of 
the prevalent immorality. This report was suppressed 
by the Board of Education, on the principle, I suppose, 
that the whole truth must not always be spoken. Is it 
any wonder that Catholic parents ask that they, and not 
politicians, shall have the choosing of their children’s 
teachers? You have not forgotten the article in “The 


4i 


Boston Herald” of Oct. 20, 1871, giving the substance of 
Prof. Agassiz’ address before the Massachusetts State 
Teachers’ Association. Again, I say, is it any wonder 
that Catholic parents, hearing these confessions, even 
under a stringent policy of silence and concealment, lose 
faith in the State system, and provide schools of their 
own at sacrifices worthy of martyrs? I cite these in¬ 
stances in no spirit of exultation, but of regret; and it 
therefore gives me pleasure to say that the character of 
the teachers of Boston stands too high to come under 
such imputations. 

THE STATE CANNOT TEACH RELIGION. 

Catholics and Secularists agree that a State without re¬ 
ligion cannot teach religion. Therefore, say the latter, 
let there be no religious teaching. Therefore, say the 
former, let there be religious teaching in the schools by 
those who can impart it in harmony with the parents’ be¬ 
lief. These say, furthermore, that, when Massachusetts 
had religion, she was careful that religion, and morality 
through religion, should be taught in our schools. It is 
claimed, that Massachusetts gained her most distin¬ 
guished honors from men educated under religious influ¬ 
ences in school, at home, and in church; but that now 
she is consuming her capital, without putting any of it at 
interest. The shadow of religious teachings still lingers 
around her schoolhouses. Shall it be that her future 
men of note are to be no more than shadows of those 
that went before them ? 

MORALS WITHOUT RELIGION. 

The Secularist maintains that all the knowledge of 
morals a child need possess may be obtained in a State 
school without religion. This is true of that species of 



42 


morals which fails to recognize God, and which has no 
foundation in supernatural motives. The Catholic does 
not admit that morality based on pure selfishness is of 
much worth, or that it will avail a child in the moment of 
temptation. In this clashing of opinions and beliefs, 
which shall give way, if there is to be room but for one ? 
Shall it be the Catholic ? He appeals to the Constitution 
of Massachusetts, and to the religious element still abid¬ 
ing in its population. The new condition of educational 
aims is vastly different from that of fifty years ago. He 
claims that his higher standard of morality, the nobler 
motive on which it is inculcated, its adaptability and ac¬ 
ceptableness to children, (waiving for the moment its di¬ 
vine origin and character), entitles him to have the edu¬ 
cation of his children permeated and completed by a 
strong infusion of religious instruction in schools. He 
contends for the rights and best interests of his own chil¬ 
dren. He does not dispute the wishes of others, nor seek 
to impose on them the adoption of his system He 
loudly asserts, that in every important point, except cost¬ 
liness of buildings and expensiveness of teachers, Catho¬ 
lic schools are superior to State schools. They are more 
thorough in secular studies, there is less cramming, and 
less multiplicity of useless branches of learning; the du¬ 
ties and responsibilities of citizens are brought home to 
parents, where they belong, fostering a spirit of self- 
reliance, without dependence on public charity; and all 
in an atmosphere of religion and morality such as the 
patrons of the school desire, and are willing to pay for. 
I am not speaking of the beginnings of a Catholic school 
in some poor neighborhood. As well might you liken a 
country school, with its fifteen or twenty scholars, under 
a schoolmistress at three or four dollars a week, to one 
of your Boston High Schools. 


43 


CATHOLICS ASK NO FAVORS. 

While the Catholic asks no favor, no privilege, no 
special prerogative, no right that he does not concede to 
others, the Secularist on the contrary, in the name of lib¬ 
erality, falls into astonishing illiberality. All must yield 
to him. He has broken down the Evangelical; he will 
subdue the Catholic. He will concede no rights to 
others, save the one of bending to his will, if that can be 
called a right which is the result of sheer force, through 
the power of a prejudiced and unrelenting majority. The 
Catholic wants to know why his right to have schools for 
his children, in which the tone of religious thought shall 
be Catholic, is not as valid as the right of Evangelicals 
and Secularists to have schools for their children in 
which the tone of thought shall be Evangelical or indiffer¬ 
ent to any religion. It must not be lost sight of, in this argu¬ 
ment, that our rights go where our money goes. A Cath¬ 
olic’s money goes into the schools, and his rights go with 
it. An inalienable right is infringed upon, is curtailed, is 
cut off altogether, when he appears at a schoolhouse 
door, leading his son by the hand, only to find at its 
threshold the emblem or sign of a hostile creed, or, what 
is worse in his belief, the chilling atmosphere within of 
doubt, negation, or an ignoring of the God-Creator, Sov¬ 
ereign Lord and Master, and final Judge of man’s 
thoughts, words, and acts, for whom it has been the fa¬ 
ther’s duty to instil into his child’s mind and heart the 
most tender love and reverence. 

HOW SOME ARE SAVED. 

No one need tell me that I exaggerate and picture 
from fancy, nor yet again that there are illustrious in¬ 
stances of boys and girls that have passed through the 
common schools without inhaling the poisonous atmos- 


44 


phere of which I speak. I do not deny the fact. These 
easily counted exceptions but prove the rule. The 
prayers, the watchful care, and unceasing devotion of 
capable and pious parents, must count for much in the sav¬ 
ing of these few. Again, there are schools, in which the 
majority of the children and many of the teachers being 
Catholics, a diluted Catholic atmosphere floats about the 
school, rendering less, in some degree, the danger of 
losing Catholic faith and morals. If we ourselves cannot 
see this danger, ministers and editors, in sermons, ad¬ 
dresses, and editorials, kindly point it out, and bespeak 
our attention. Their zeal and ardor are aroused to new 
endeavor in the charitable hope of hurting “Popery.” 
The thought lends courage to their hearers. “ It will de- 
Romanize the children,” says one. “ The Bible and the 
common schools will grind out the Catholicity of the 
children,” says another. Similar expressions might be 
multiplied without end. Forewarned is for the wise to 
be fore-armed. It was only when the Bible in the schools 
had ceased to be the question in dispute that the Bible 
was put on the cold side of the door. 

WHAT RAISES THE STORM. 

There is small hope that justice, or even patient and 
unbiassed hearing of our grievances, will be accorded, 
when, as soon as a voice is raised in behalf of God-given 
rights, forty thousand pulpits ring with bitter invectives, 
gross misrepresentations, and appeals to the lowest pas¬ 
sions of those who gather around them ; when politicians 
(not statesmen) catch up the cry, and trading away all 
principle, if they ever had an}', ride into office in the fury 
and madness of the hour. Secret societies, that have so 
often proved political sepulchres for demagogues, lend 
their help. 


45 


The darkest and fiercest hour of the storm is that 
which precedes its breaking. We take courage, then, 
from the extreme and unbridled fury of the hour, and 
from the violent language used in defiance of good taste, 
reason, brotherly kindness, and all regard for just rights. 

LEADERS CHANGE. 

The people will yet become disgusted with the un¬ 
reasonableness and changeableness of their leaders. A 
few years ago they were told to stand by “ the Bible in 
the schools;” to “strike down any one who dared raise a 
hand against itthat “to die for it would be a glorious 
martyrdom.” Secret societies were formed for its protec¬ 
tion. Now editors and ministers frankly confess it was 
all a mistake; that our liberties do not depend on keep¬ 
ing the Bible in the schools ; that to do so is illogical, 
wrong, unjust to Catholics, Jews, and infidels. There has 
been no more powerful advocate of the Bible in the 
schools than Dr. J. G. Holland, who, in this month’s 
“ Scribner,” admits that “ the compulsory reading of the 
J 3 ible was to the Catholic, to the Jew, to the atheist, a 
grievance, a hardship, an oppression.” “ For ourselves,” 
he says, “ we must confess to a change of convictions on 
this matter. ... If we do away with the grievance of the 
Catholic, we do away with his claim; and we mark out 
for the Catholic and Protestant alike the path of peace 
to walk in side by side.” The doctor does not seem to 
understand the nature of our claim. It is not to deprive 
Protestants of their Bible in their schools: it is to edu¬ 
cate Catholic children in Catholic schools with our own 
money, under State supervision if you please. We do 
not want Protestant money, nor any State money that 
was not taken from our purses. We want not one dollar 
for pope, bishop, or priest; not one cent for our church. 
We do not desire the doing-away of common schools : we 


46 

are establishing schools all over the country on a thoroughly 
democratic basis. We are striving for a stretching of a 
hide-bound system. We wish it to be more directly un¬ 
der parental control, more economically managed, re¬ 
stricted to its proper function of elementary education, 
and violating no conscientious duty of parents. It is just 
as likely that a few years hence the people will be told 
that education belongs to parents, and that if the State 
interferes it must be in accordance with the wish of par¬ 
ents. When communism becomes rife and bold, property 
owners may be willing to discuss principles only to learn 
that they are reaping as they sowed. Some heads take 
in truth slowly, others only by trepanning. 

FAIR PLAY EXPECTED FROM FREE RELIGIONISTS. 

We are justified in expecting fairer treatment at the 
hands of Free Religionists. If we may trust Herbert 
Spencer as a worthy exponent of this class, toleration in 
its widest sense is a fundamental dogma of their creed: 

“ Our toleration should be the widest possible; or, rather, 
we should aim at something beyond toleration, as com- # 
monly understood. In dealing with alien beliefs our 
endeavor must be, not simply to refrain from injustice of 
word or deed, but also to do justice by an open recogni¬ 
tion of positive worth. We must qualify our disagree¬ 
ment with as much as may be of sympathy.” (“ First 
Principles.”) 

From scientists and Free Religionists, then, we may ex¬ 
pect the same rights they claim for themselves. As they 
would not consent to our forcing their children into 
schools under Catholic influences, direct or indirect, so 
they will not ask that our children shall be forced into 
schools under objectionable influences. As they do not 
permit us to decide upon the truth or untruth of their re¬ 
ligious opinions, so they will not seek to decide for us 



47 


upon our doctrines. Here comes in the apparently in¬ 
surmountable obstacle to an amicable settlement of this 
vexed question. Each one of the disputants, except the 
Catholic, wants to make all others bend to his plan, or 
way, or system, seemingly satisfied that he alone is right. 
The Catholic, on the contrary, says, Let each one have 
his own plan; and with an even start, and on equal 
ground, let it be seen which party, the Evangelical, the 
scientist or Free Religionist, or the Catholic, can make the 
greatest sacrifices, accomplish the most work in the most 
satisfactory manner, for the thorough religious and sec¬ 
ular education of all the children they can bring under 
their controL 


NO RELIGION IN A BANK. 

Free Religionists, and the large class of Christian reli¬ 
gionists represented by Henry Ward Beecher, answer, 
Religion has no place in the State school; and, with it 
kept out, the school is as free to one class of religionists 
as to another, and equally so to Jews and infidels. To 
illustrate this theory, they say that as there need be no 
religion in a bank, a shop, or a business office, so there 
need be no religion in a school. This is as strong a 
justification as they can bring. 

The comparison fails for want of resemblance between 
the things compared. A man goes into the bank, the 
shop, the office. A boy goes to the school. The bank, 
the shop, the office, has for its object the transaction of 
its own special material business. The school deals with 
the boy’s mind and heart; is a place set apart for the 
forming, disciplining, educating the young, by trained 
and skilled manipulators of the intellect and emotions. 
The young look up to these teachers with sentiments of 
respect and often of reverence; nor are they capable of 
analyzing and judging the influences brought to bear on 


48 

them. They are in the school six hours a day, for five 
days in the week, ten months in the year. They are jus¬ 
tified in voting all schooling, in excess of these long 
hours, a bore. They who go into a bank, or any other 
place of business, are men grown, fully competent to judge 
of insidious or open attempts to prejudice their minds on 
points of religion or morals. These business offices are 
not monopolies like the State school, and their proprie¬ 
tors know the danger of meddling with their customers’ 
religious opinions. The example of a man asking for a 
Bible in a hat-shop has not yet occurred; and, when it 
does occur, it will be met by calling in a policeman to 
arrest an escaped lunatic. But a child asking a teacher 
to tell it something about God, Christ, the redemption, 
sin, or the life to come, would ask a proper question, en¬ 
titled to an answer from a competent teacher. Much as 
our opponents may be pleased to protest against religion 
in the State schools, it is there, and in some shape it will 
be there till the end of time. I am not speaking of 
Evangelical schools, but of schools purely secular, in 
which there is no Bible, no text book of religion, no 
prayer, no hymn ; and yet, in this expurgated and shriv- 
elled-up school, the teaching will be for or against relig¬ 
ion, as the teacher happens to be. His children do not 
come to him to buy bills of exchange, or boots, or hats, 
but to acquire knowledge, to learn, to take in, through 
open eyes’ and ears, information concerning the things it 
sees, and the truths and facts of which it hears. President 
Anderson, of Rochester University, is an authority in ed¬ 
ucational methods and means, of great weight wherever 
known. He exhibits this power of the teacher in a few 
striking passages thus : — 

PRESIDENT ANDERSON ON INCIDENTAL INSTRUCTION. 

“With the element of Christian faith in head and heart, it 
is impossible for an earnest teacher to avoid giving out con- 


49 


stantly religious and moral impulses and thoughts. He must 
of necessity set forth his notions about God, the soul, con¬ 
science, sin, the future life, and divine revelation. If he prom¬ 
ises not to do so, he will fail to keep his word, or his teachings 
in science or literature or history will be miserably shallow 
and inadequate. . . . Incidental instruction in morality 

and religion, then, ought to be the main reliance of the Chris¬ 
tian teacher. The ends of a Christian school, while working 
by its own laws and limitations, ought not to be essentially 
different from a Christian church. The principles we have 
thus indicated are universal in their application. If the 
Christian teacher must make the elements of his religious 
faith color all his teaching, the same must be true of the un¬ 
christian teacher. . . . There is no good thinking that is 

not honest thinking. ... If parents wish their children 
educated in Christian principles, they must seek out honest 
Christian men to be their teachers.” 

Here in a few words is the plainly spoken judgment of 
an experienced teacher. It is true, President Anderson is 
contending in behalf of higher education in colleges and 
seminaries. But I do not hesitate to say, with no small 
experience as an educator, that in elementary schools, 
where young minds are dealt with, the incidental teaching 
in morals and religion is of vastly greater extent and ef¬ 
fect. They who assert so boldly that children of inquisi¬ 
tive and unfolding minds can frequent schools for secular 
learning, without being influenced by the dominant relig¬ 
ious tone of the school and teachers, speak without war¬ 
rant. 

THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE. 

As meaningless an illustration is that in which the 
multiplication table plays a part. There is no religion, 
they say, in the multiplication table. I never heard any 
one say there was, while it is not unknown that there may 
be religion, or antipathy to religion, in him who teaches 
the table, as well as in the place in which it is taught. A 


5 ° 


sneer at “ Popery ” requires no allusion to figures or ci¬ 
phering, unless when the years of the Apocalypse, or the 
coming of Antichrist, are under discussion. 

A COMMON LANGUAGE. 

But, after all, the vexed question of religion aside, see 
the gain to the Republic by giving a common language to 
all its children, through the common schools. Then why, 
if that is a gain, provide a teacher of German wherever a 
few German children are found, or, where there are many, 
give them a school with German as its language, as in 
Erie, Penn. ? There is room for any thing and every 
thing except religion. 

DOES THIS SYSTEM ABOLISH CASTE? 

Anyhow, it cannot be denied, we are told, that the 
common schools bring all classes of children to the same 
level, make them meet on equal ground, and sit side by 
side on the same benches. This speech belongs to the 
demagogue and the electioneering stump. The level 
spoken of may be found in rural districts and small 
towns; it is quite unknown in large cities in practice, 
while no one denies the beauty of the theory. 

It is well known that in cities the rich, as a rule, live 
in neighborhoods where no poor man can have his home. 
When there is danger of contact, the rich man sends his 
daintily nurtured and well-clad child to a private school. 
There are public schools in New York and Brooklyn, 
whose pupils come solely from the comfortable classes. 
What an advantage to the pride of so many admirers of 
common schools, that thirty thousand children of labor¬ 
ers and mechanics in New York, and twenty thousand in 
Brooklyn, are educated in Christian free schools ! It 
makes access to the public schools so much the more 




5i 


pleasant. Why is it that so many thousand children re¬ 
ceive their elementary education not in the public schools, 
but in the schools of the Children’s Aid Society, under 
Evangelical influences ? Is it not beyond doubt that if in 
New York City the compulsory law were to be enforced, 
and all the children now running the streets, and all the 
children now in the Aid Society’s schools, and all the 
children now in the Catholic free schools, were to be 
marched into their district public schools, an almost equal 
number of well-dressed children would be marched out ? 
If in any school the influence of money and good society 
predominates, the poor will quit it for shame’s sake; if 
patched pants and calico dresses rule, the rich will go 
out for pride’s sake. You will find truer democracy in 
the Christian free schools of New York than in the com¬ 
mon schools. 

SCHOOL HOURS AND SCHOOLMASTERS. 

The week-day school, we are told, is not the place for 
teaching religion; there are hours enough for these 
lessons at home and on Sunday. This advice comes with 
a bad grace from Boston, since the Medical College of 
Middlesex has laid down these two rules among others: 
“The duration of daily attendance, including the time 
given to recess and physical exercises, should not exceed 
four and a half hours for the primary schools.” “ There 
should be required no study out of school for children of 
the primary schools.” 

A more serious consideration is that of compelling 
parents to be schoolmasters to their children. It is cruel 
to put this task on backs already overburdened. Father 
and mother toil like slaves from morning to night. Do 
their .mentors think of the early rising, the hasty break¬ 
fast, the long hours of wearying and exhausting labor, of 
the fatigued frame that at the coming on of night seeks 


52 


needed rest? We are not speaking in favor of clerks, 
merchants, and professional men. They can speak for 
themselves and their requirements; their friends are 
numerous, intelligent, and active. Legislation always 
takes their circumstances and wants into account. 

It is among the laboring and mechanic classes that 'a 
numerous progeny is found. The mother sees to her 
household and the wants of her many children. Her 
education in book-learning may be defective ; and, if she 
undertook to compete with the trained schoolmistress, 
her deficiencies might become known to her young ones. 
Time, strength, capacity, — all are wanting. Yet she is 
reminded, if she reads the newspapers, that one minister 
and another devote their time to the set and formal reli¬ 
gious instruction of their children, out of school, in the 
evenings, on the Saturdays, and with special care on the 
Sundays; and she is piously advised to do the same. 
These learned, eloquent, leisured clergymen put them¬ 
selves on a par with the hard-working mason and the 
humble washerwoman. It is, I say, an unworthy mock¬ 
ery of these respectable bread-winners, day-workers, or 
betrays profound ignorance of their conditions and daily 
occupations. These poor people pay their taxes to have 
others in whom they have confidence, whose religious 
convictions harmonize with their own, relieve them of a 
duty they feel incompetent to perform. The Sunday- 
school and the church remain. Good children go to 
Sunday-school; those whose homes are least Christian in 
spirit and teachings keep clear of it. Besides, who would 
be satisfied to have his child put off with one lesson a 
week in any of the rudimentary branches belonging to 
the common school? Yet the lesson of lessons, the law 
and will of God as manifested to his creatures, by which 
character is formed and moral principles are established, 
may be satisfactorily learned in the short hour of a Sunday- 
school. 


53 


Parents need the church and the best services of the 
clergyman on Sunday more than their children, that they 
may not forget the lessons of their youth. 

THE SPECIAL ADVANTAGES OF CATHOLIC SCHOOLS. 

It seems more than unreasonable to ask Catholic 
parents to forego advantages attainable in and through 
Catholic schools, — advantages far superior to any offered 
by State schools. 

First, Catholic schools instruct in all the useful 
branches of a sound English education. 

Secondly, They are more economical, costing no more 
than one-fourth or one-third the expense of supporting 
State schools; and commanding at the lowest possible 
price, merely food and clothing, one of the most expen¬ 
sive necessities of the age and country, — skilled and 
trained intellectual labor. 

Thirdly, Their teachers are devoted to their work of 
teaching as a life-work ; study every day, and waste no 
time in idle visits and foolish amusements. 

Fourthly, These teachers are in sympathy with the re¬ 
ligious faith of the patrons of their schools. 

Fifthly, Parental schools alone will stand the test of 
logic ; they are consonant to sound democratic republican 
doctrines ; they make possible the inculcation of morality 
by the authority of a divine Lawgiver; they respect the 
natural rights of parents, and meddle with and infringe 
on no one else’s rights. 

They are a necessity demanded by the circumstances 
of the times, and the demoralized condition of the coun¬ 
try, as well as for the future welfare of the Republic. It 
is our common country, belonging not to one man more 
than to another. He is the best citizen, no matter where 
he was born, who loves it most and labors in his sphere 
of life, according to his ability, with purest motives, for 


54 


the honor and prosperity of the Union. He would be a 
renegade and base betrayer of his country, who, believ¬ 
ing that morality on a religious foundation was essential 
to the safety and continuance of the Government, should 
consent to withhold from children all possible means of 
growth in sound moral principles and conduct. 

RIGHTS OF MINORITIES IN OTHER COUNTRIES. 

The experience of every civilized nation of Europe is 
against the suicidal career that we are entering on. No 
difficulty is found in countries whose inhabitants are of 
different religious beliefs, in arranging a system of 
schools for all. Though some of those countries are 
spoken of as despotic in character, their despotism never 
goes so far as to interfere with the religious convictions 
of Catholic, Jew, or Evangelical. At least, Catholic 
Canada, our immediate neighbor, Catholic Belgium, Cath¬ 
olic France, Catholic Bavaria, and Catholic Austria, re¬ 
spect the parental rights of the minority, with a sense of 
justice we would do well to study. The wisdom and 
good sense of the world are not concentrated in the 
American people. 

THE QUESTION MUST BE SETTLED. 

This question, thanks to various causes, is now fairly 
before the country for discussion and settlement. To 
shelve it by Constitutional Amendments will be no lasting 
settlement. Constitutional enactments in contravention 
of parental rights not transferred to the State are worth 
the parchment on which they are written, and no more. 
This is not an original idea. I have picked it up in Bos¬ 
ton. This lesson was taught to the nation by the settle¬ 
ment of slavery. 



55 


POLITICAL PARTIES. 

The agitation, I must confess, is embarrassing to both 
political parties ; much more so, however, to political as¬ 
pirants who fear pitfalls, and are anxious lest they bury 
all their hopes in graves of their own digging. One 
party is rushing along on its path of injustice, because 
popular clamor impels that way; the other, half willing, 
half unwilling, does not dare say a word in opposition, for 
it, no more than the other party, has statesmen for lead¬ 
ers, while politicians abound. We are accused of an al¬ 
liance with one of these parties. The party that forms 
an alliance, open or covert, with any religious body in 
these United States, proclaims its own folly, and signs its 
own death-warrant. The leaders of the Catholic body 
are neither fools to trust any political party, nor knaves 
to seek privileges and favors over the religious denomi¬ 
nations of the country by such unworthy and dishonor¬ 
able means. No prominent politician believes the absurd 
imputation. It is a sop thrown to Cerberus, to bigotry. 
We seek equal rights for all, favors for none. Until cor¬ 
rect principles obtain recognition, this question, affecting 
the interests of millions of citizens, will remain a cause of 
controversy and disturbance. Thirty years of patient 
submission have brought us scarcely a kind word; and 
the condition of Helotism into which we have been falling 
is regarded by many as fitting and proper, and by others 
as right and just. There is a sound maxim in the Amer¬ 
ican mind, that any class suffering from disabilities and a 
violation of rights should resort to established methods 
for a rectification of these wrongs, and that a class that 
does not care enough to seek a remedy for its sufferings 
may be left to nurse its grumblings in private, without 
thought or attention from their fellow-countrymen. 

While, therefore, we do not feel disposed to waste grat¬ 
itude on the Democratic party for favors never received, 


56 

and owe no more to the Republican party, we have only 
contempt for the hangers-on of both parties, who would 
have us hold in abeyance the assertion of our rights, lest 
this office-seeker or another should be embarrassed. 
Catholics are learning to break away from both parties, 
watch events, and treasure in their memories the brave 
words and deeds of politicians who, taking advantage of 
a momentary outbreak of bigotry and religious hate, write 
a record which a few years hence they would give their 
right hand to blot out. 

CHARGES AGAINST THE SYSTEM. 

We charge upon the system of State schools, as now 
carried on in these United States, the perpetration of 
manifold injustices and the upholding of false principles. 

First, It is an infringement of parental rights and du¬ 
ties, inasmuch as it compels poor people, who educate 
their own children for conscience’s sake, to help educate 
their richer neighbors’ children. 

Secondly, It cruelly oppresses poorer citizens by giving 
to their richer neighbors’ sons not simply an elementary 
education, but an education sufficient to earn their living 
by means of a learned profession. To put both on an 
equal footing, poor children should be taught a trade at 
the expense of the State. 

Thirdly, The State does not know what its system 
should be. In some States the education is restricted to 
rudimentary studies; in others, it extends to a University 
course. Some States allow a qualified amount of Evan¬ 
gelical teaching; others, professing to exclude all relig¬ 
ion, permit any except the Catholic. These are the in¬ 
consistencies and hypocrisy of the system. 

Fourthly, it is narrow, contracted, limited in its scope, 
afraid of rivalry, and incapable of the very function for 



57 


which it was established. Its right to educate is denied 
by its admission that it cannot educate in the true sense 
of the word. 

Fifthly, It stultifies itself; for, beginning on a religious 
basis, and acquiring its chief renown by the fruits of its 
first work, it would end by banning and barring all relig¬ 
ious beliefs, even “ the existence of an overruling Provi¬ 
dence.” 

Sixthly, It establishes a monopoly of business best left 
to individual enterprise and the immediate control of ^ 
parents. 

Seventhly, The principles on which it is justified will 
justify with greater force the claim of the Communist to 
labor and bread. 

ADMIT THE WRONG, AND CHANGE THE SYSTEM. 

After so much fault-finding with the existing system of 
common schools, it is not out of the way to ask what sys¬ 
tem is proposed in exchange. My object is not to pro¬ 
pose plans and systems, but to argue that the present one 
is radically wrong, and needs amendment. Until the 
American people admit the failure of the system as it now 
is, no change need be looked for. Once admitted, they 
will be quick to bring about a change. They will either 
throw education directly and compulsorily on parents, 
paying only for those unable* to pay for themselves, or 
they will so broaden the system that all can come under 
it without the sacrifice of conscientious rights. This 
plunging into Secularism is only the cowardice of the pol¬ 
itician who fears to face the consequences of sound logic, 
common-sense, equal rights, parental prerogatives, and a 
secretly nourished hatred and conspiracy against the 
Catholic Church. To put off justice in deference to the 
expediency of the hour, is the way of the politician; the 


53 


statesman announces his principles, and stands or falls by 
them. Truth is old ; it is ever new; it endures forever. 


FULL DISCUSSION AND FAIR ARGUMENT. 

I appear before you at your request. On one point at 
least we agree. It is your good pleasure to listen to ar¬ 
guments in favor of principles and doctrines with which 
you do not agree because in your judgment they are not 
sound. You do not, on that account, question my hon¬ 
esty of purpose, my sincerity of conviction, or my love of 
country. Perhaps the speaker of this afternoon and his 
hearers are as wide apart on this question as any two in¬ 
dividuals in the country. Yet we have come together, — 
I, to address you in plainness of speech, not wanting, I 
trust, in courtesy; you, to listen patiently and attentively. 

BOSTON SHOULD SETTLE THE QUESTION. 

When designing men are plotting mischief and breed¬ 
ing hate and rancor, it is well for Boston to furnish this 
useful lesson to other parts of the country. 

To you, men of Boston, to the intelligence and honesty 
of Massachusetts, and especially of Boston, I in my 
character of Catholic American citizen appeal in behalf 
of the rights of parents for dispassionate consideration 
of this subject; confident that, if not heeded to-day, the 
day is not distant when it will be considered. I have 
said it before, I say it again, that the settlement of this 
great question, affecting the future welfare and stability 
of the Republic, must come from Boston and Massachu¬ 
setts. It is more creditable, in the mean time, for us to 
suffer, to be punished and persecuted, than for American 
citizens to be the persecutors. The rights you would 
maintain at any cost for yourselves, I beseech you not to 
deny to the humblest citizens in the land, however help- 



59 


less they may seem. For large numbers, who have few to 
speak for them, I plead before you. Your interests and 
theirs, as fellow-citizens, are bound together as one. Our 
country is with unparalleled quickness becoming one of 
populous cities. These centres of population, notwith¬ 
standing extraordinary efforts to counteract the danger, 
are nurturing street-Arabs, wild youths, bands of trained 
depredators on others’ property, hosts of corrupt, de¬ 
moralized inhabitants. Peaceable and order-loving 
citizens are bound for their own sake to look to the 
danger, call to their assistance every available agency, 
and engage the services of all who can work in this vast 
and difficult field. In vain will they develop vigor and 
power of body in the young, and brighten and quicken 
the intellect, if the cunning of the one, and the passions 
and appetites that spring from the other, be not held in 
subjection by the elevation and strengthening of the 
heart. 


HELPERS IN THE WORK. 

We offer to do a work for our own poor, which you 
yourselves confess you cannot accomplish. We possess, 
in our religious orders of Brothers and Sisters, armies of 
skilled teachers voluntarily consecrated to the work of 
laboring among poor children and instructing them in 
secular learning, while grounding them in virtue and 
morality. They are ready to spend their lives in this 
work of highest love and self-sacrifice : they can reach 
the hearts of these children of poverty ; they can calm 
turbulent passions, and teach self-restraint, love of order, 
and respect for the rights of others. 

The large cities need the services of these workers and 
teachers. It is unwise, it is worse, to cast them off, in 
view of the non-success of common schools to reach 
thousands of poor children; it is unwise to assert prin- 


6o 


ciples, that, logically carried out, lead to Communism ; it 
is dangerous unto madness to hinder the influences of re¬ 
ligion from reaching to the lanes and by-ways of our 
crowded cities; it is sowing discord, and engendering 
heart-burnings, to trample on the just rights of any class 
in a Republic. 

Parental rights, involving parental duties imposed by 
the natural and the revealed law, sanctioned and upheld 
by the common law and the Constitution, cannot be per¬ 
sistently disregarded without danger and detriment to 
the nation. 


FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES. 

In a few words let me resume and give some conclu¬ 
sions logically deducible from the facts, statements, and 
arguments submitted to you in this paper. 

In a Republic whose citizens are of different religious 
beliefs, who are voters needing intelligence, who are 
parents breeding races of freemen, the following prin¬ 
ciples are primary and vital: — 

1. The non-interference of the State in religious mat¬ 
ters, in church or school. 

2 . Compulsory knowledge, through parents’ schools, 
under parents’ control, and at their cost. 

3. Free trade in education, or no monopoly of the 
teacher’s profession. 




THE 


PUBLIC SCHOOL QUESTION, 

AS UNDERSTOOD BY THE LIBERAL AMER¬ 
ICAN CITIZEN. 


A LECTURE BY FRANCIS E. ABBOT, 

Editor of “The Index,” 

DELIVERED IN BOSTON, FEB. 20, 1876. 


It is my duty this afternoon to speak to you upon the 
“public school question as viewed by the Liberal Ameri¬ 
can Citizen ; ” terms which I understand to indicate merely 
the point of view occupied by those who look at this 
question in the light of well-recognized American princi¬ 
ples, and with reference to the interests of the whole peo¬ 
ple and their self-chosen government, as distinguished 
from the point of view occupied by those who look at it 
in the light of other than American principles, and with 
reference to the interests of a party, a sect, or a church. 
There is a sectional, and there is also a national, aspect 
of every great public issue ; there is a partizan, ecclesias¬ 
tical and sectarian view of the school question, and also 
a universal, secular and strictly non-sectarian view of it. 
It is the latter view alone that I hold, and I shall try to 
represent faithfully this afternoon all who hold it. That 
they are only a portion, though a very large portion, of 

61 




62 


the entire population of the country, I of course admit; 
but that they look at this question in the light of their 
own interests as a party, and not in that of the equal in¬ 
terests of each and every inhabitant of the land, I em¬ 
phatically deny. In other words, I maintain, contrary to 
the plausible and ingenious misrepresentation sometimes 
put forward, that the secular party to this school question 
is not a “sect,” and cannot be justly so considered from 
the mere fact of its not embracing the whole population. 
If that fact alone were decisive, then unsectarianism is an 
impossibility so long as a difference of opinion exists 
among men. But what really makes a party partizan, or 
sectarian, is the selfish endeavor to sacrifice the interests of 
the whole people to their own interests as a mere part 
of the people; while, if any party aims honestly at secur¬ 
ing the interests of the whole people by rendering equal 
and exact justice to every individual, it is a strictly non- 
partizan and non-sectarian party. For instance, the Re¬ 
publican party, whatever its subsequent sins, was an or¬ 
ganized national and non-partizan party during the war 
of the rebellion, because it aimed at the true interests of 
the whole nation, including the very South which was in 
rebellion ; and to-day the great body of honest men, who 
are opposed to the army of corruptionists in politics, is 
an unorganized national and non-partizan party, because 
it aims at establishing politics on the basis of common 
honesty, which is really the equal interest of all. Pre¬ 
cisely in the same manner I maintain that the secular 
party on the-school question is a strictly non-sectarian 
party, and not a sect at all, because it aims solely to set¬ 
tle this question on the basis of that equal justice which 
is the common and supreme interest of all mankind. 
What I have to say on the school question, therefore, will 
be said in the interest of no part of the people, but of 
the whole people ; for, unlike some others, I belong to no 


63 

party or sect which has interests separate from, or hostile 
to, the interests of the whole people. 

But how comes there to be any school question at all ? 
The public school system was established, and has been 
sustained, by the people itself, solely for the purpose of 
supplying a universal want: namely, the education of the 
people’s children. Nothing human is perfect, and the 
school system is not perfect; but it was honestly founded 
for the good of the whole people, not of a party or sect, 
and can be improved. Why is there to-day a “school 
question ” to be settled ? 

THE CATHOLIC PROTEST. 

Since the year 1840, when the Roman Catholic Church, 
under the lead of Archbishop Hughes, began its attack 
on the public school system, there has been a persistent 
and determined protest against this system on the ground 
that it is unjust and oppressive to the Catholic conscience. 
Whatever the grounds of this complaint, its earnestness 
and sincerity are unquestionable in view of the fact that 
the Catholics of the country have voluntarily taxed them¬ 
selves sufficiently to establish and sustain a great system 
of Catholic Parochial Schools for the education of their 
children under the sole control of the Catholic priest¬ 
hood, and that now about four hundred thousand children 
are receiving instruction in them, to the total neglect and 
disuse of the public schools. A protest manifestly so 
sincere, urged in the sacred name of conscience, deserves 
to receive the most respectful and dispassionate consider¬ 
ation of the majority. If the protest is a reasonable one, 
and if the public school system really infringes the unde¬ 
niable rights even of a single citizen, reform and redress 
are the only right course to be adopted; and if not, the 
fact of even an unreasonable protest on the part of so 
large and so rapidly increasing a portion of the people is 


6 4 


cause for grave disquietude in the minds of all intelligent 
patriots. The school question thus raised is complicated 
still further by the fact that the great body of non-Catho- 
lics who heartily support the public school system are 
themselves divided as to the relation it ought to bear to 
religion — one part holding that the schools should have 
a distinctively Protestant Christian character, the other 
part holding that they should be wholly colorless or neu¬ 
tral with respect to religious beliefs. The former main¬ 
tain an intermediate position between the positions of the 
Catholic and the secular or liberal parties, and are in fact 
attempting to reconcile irreconcilable principles. But 
their consistency or inconsistency does not immediately 
affect the main question of the support or the abolition of 
the State school system. Protestants and liberals are 
nearly unanimous in supporting it, and differ only on the 
question whether the schools supported by the State shall 
be wholly or only partially secular. But the protest of 
the Catholic Church strikes at the very foundation of 
State schools; it denies the right of the State to educate 
at all, and claims the whole field of education as part of 
the domain of the Church itself. Let us, then, concentrate 
our attention for the present on the Catholic protest, and 
consider, without passion and without prejudice, how far 
this protest is grounded in justice and in truth. 

MINOR OBJECTIONS. 

On the minor objections urged by the Catholic Church 
against the public school system, I shall touch very light¬ 
ly, reserving my chief attention for the one great and 
central principle of its protest. 

It is charged, for instance, that the public school sys¬ 
tem, as compared with the Catholic parochial school 
system, is unduly expensive, and the merit of superior 
economy is pleaded for the latter. This may be true to 




6 5 

some extent, and is easily explained when the two kinds 
of education imparted are compared as to their intrinsic 
value. Economy is not always secured by buying cheap 
articles; and the cheapness of Catholic education is no 
argument in its favor, when its character is considered in 
the light of certain Catholic admissions which might 
easily be quoted. But that the universal adoption of the 
voluntary denominational system, supplanting the public 
schools with church schools established by each sect in 
its own sectarian interest, could possibly reduce the total 
cost of education on the whole, is incredible. The cost 
of so many sets of schools would greatly exceed the cost 
of our present school system, if the same number of 
children should be educated with the same degree of 
thoroughness as now. 

Again, the gradual expansion of the common school 
system, by the establishment of State high schools, nor¬ 
mal schools, and universities, is dwelt upon as a great 
evil, which will ultimately involve the destruction of de¬ 
nominational institutions of the corresponding grade. 
Perhaps no higher encomium, in the eyes of every en¬ 
lightened friend of education who knows the worthless¬ 
ness of most denominational colleges, could be passed 
upon our present system. Whoever is competent to com¬ 
pare Cornell University and Michigan University with 
sectarian colleges that could easily be named, will see 
that this objection is of the nature of a boomerang, and 
returns to damage the unskilful launcher of it. It would 
be foreign to my present subject to discuss the equity of 
sustaining high schools, normal schools, and universities, 
as State institutions, since we are now concerned only 
with the elementary public schools as such; but I would 
enter a general denial of the assumption that the lower 
grades of State schools are inequitable because of the 
supposed inherent tendency of the system to expand into 


66 


higher institutions of learning. Certainly a very strong 
argument can be made, on grounds of a thoroughly dem¬ 
ocratic character, in defence of that tendency, if it exists. 

Again, the argument that the secular education given 
in the common schools not only does not tend to dimin¬ 
ish crime, as is claimed by their friends, but, on the con¬ 
trary, does tend directly to foster immorality both in teach¬ 
ers and pupils, was urged on this platform last Sunday by 
Bishop McQuaid. But statistics of unquestionable accu¬ 
racy are against him on the former point, as any one may 
learn from the “ Report of the Committee on Education 
of the New York City Council of Political Reform on 
Compulsory Education,” published in 1873 ; while on the 
latter point it is sufficient to say that moral abuses tend 
to creep into every great institution, and that infinitely 
worse stories are told, on authority at least as good, of the 
immorality practised in Roman Catholic convents, nun¬ 
neries, monasteries, and so forth, than have ever been 
told of American public schools. This is a very danger¬ 
ous argument for Roman Catholics to use; it will hurt 
their own church a great deal more than it can possibly 
hurt the public school system ; but it is one which I have 
little inclination to go into, and one which will certainly 
draw upon the Catholic Church a host of assailants, if the 
Church is incautious enough to give them an opportunity. 
The wholesale charges brought by Catholic writers 
against the public schools with respect to their so-called 
immoral tendencies will not always be suffered to go un¬ 
challenged. Whatever truth there is in them should be 
made manifest; whoever is guilty should be exposed and 
punished ; but wholesale insinuations against the teach¬ 
ers and pupils of the public schools will call out at last a 
species of reply not very agreeable to those who have in¬ 
dulged in this mode of warfare. No argument against 
the justice of taxing the whole community for the support 


6 7 

of public schools can be drawn from any such local and 
incidental abuses as were referred to last Sunday; 
whether actual or invented, they are neither part nor pro¬ 
duct of the public school system as such ; and I pass 
them by, not simply because they are irrelevant to the ar¬ 
gument, but also because, if the debate is diverted to a 
discussion of the relative moral influence on society of 
the public school system and of the Roman Catholic 
Church, the latter will have all it can do to defend its own 
principle of ecclesiastical celibacy, and the historical re¬ 
cord of its effect on public morality. 

THE CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE. 

It is not these minor and subsidiary objections to the 
system of State schools—’their alleged expensiveness, 
their tendency to supplement themselves with public high 
schools and colleges, or the insinuation of their necessa¬ 
rily immoral influence (which, if the insinuation could be 
sustained by proof, would be anything but a minor objec¬ 
tion).— that constitute the real strength of the Catholic 
protest against the public school system. Its strength 
lies in the claim that the Catholic conscience is violated and 
oppressed by this system. This is a claim which de¬ 
mands the most patient, serious and candid attention of 
every just man. No matter whether the claim of an ag¬ 
grieved conscience is made by a great party or by an 
obscure and unsupported individual, it is a claim which 
commands instant and reverential heed; and no institu¬ 
tion can be solidly built or stable which rests on disre¬ 
gard of one man’s outraged conscience. Unless the 
foundations of the school system are laid on the rock of 
absolute equity and impartial justice, it is built upon the 
sand, and must fall; and the examination of the sound¬ 
ness of its foundations cannot be postponed, if only a 
solitary voice is raised in solemn protest against it. 


68 


Nevertheless, it does not follow that every protest made 
in the name of conscience must be obeyed or yielded to, 
even if made in most absolute and unquestioned sincer¬ 
ity. Conscience itself is under law; it is bound to be 
reasonable. So far as the individual is concerned, his 
private conscience, whether in fact reasonable or not, 
must be obeyed; for it is to him the expression and 
measure of his moral reason, beyond which or above 
which he cannot go. But so far as his claims on other 
men are concerned, his individual conscience is not and 
cannot be the ultimate law of their conduct. They too 
have consciences, as sacred to them as his to him; and 
the one common law of reason is binding on all alike. 
Hence the Catholic’s claim of an injured and wronged 
conscience is not of itself a sufficient warrant for the im¬ 
mediate abandonment of the school system; he must 
first prove it to be a just and reasonable conscience. Un¬ 
instructed and perverted consciences are altogether too 
common in this world,—foolish and wrong things are 
too often demanded or done in conscience’ name, — to 
make it either wise or right to give up a great public in¬ 
stitution of proved beneficence, or to surrender the neces¬ 
sary conditions of its existence, the very first moment 
that it is challenged. Despite his infallible standard of 
right and wrong, the Pope’s ex cathedra deliverances, the 
Roman Catholic in this free country must waive his di¬ 
vine authorities of Pope and Church, and consent to plead 
his case before the bar of the universal reason of man¬ 
kind. This Bishop McQuaid did last Sunday; from this 
platform he addressed his plea to the public intelligence 
of the country, just as if no Pope had ever sat on the 
throne of the Vatican; and he never once quoted the 
authority of his infallible Sovereign as the supreme con¬ 
firmation of his own words. The Catholic Church itself, 
Pope and all, must do the same; it protests against the 


69 

school system, and addresses the protest to the general 
intelligence of the country; and by the verdict of this 
intelligence the protest must stand or fall. Therefore I 
say that the Catholic claim of an outraged conscience, 
with the tacit but evidently implied sanction of Bishop 
McQuaid and every other Catholic who consents to rea¬ 
son his case before the public, must be judged by the 
laws of reason; and, if it is adjudged to be unreasonable, 
such Catholics cannot without tergiversation repudiate 
the legitimacy of the verdict they have invoked and there¬ 
by sanctioned in advance. 

What, then, is the essence and the rational ground of 
the claim that the Catholic conscience is wronged and 
trampled on by the maintenance of the public school 
system ? 

WHAT THE CATHOLIC CONSCIENCE CLAIMS. 

i. The Catholic conscience demands, in the apt phrase 
of Cardinal McCloskey, “Catholic education for Catholic 
children.” But by whom is this demand refused ? Sure¬ 
ly not by the State, which impeses on no child any partic¬ 
ular form of religious education. I admit that the prac¬ 
tice of Bible-reading in the public schools is a wrong and 
infringement upon the rights of Catholics, Jews, and all 
non-Protestant-Christian children ; but that this practice 
prevents Catholics from giving Catholic education to their 
children, it would be preposterous to pretend. They are 
doing it at this very time. Certainly the demand of 
“ Catholic education for Catholic children ” is granted in 
advance, unless it means that the State should furnish 
such education. That is a very different matter. Who¬ 
ever wants sectarian education is perfectly free to get it; 
but it must be at his own cost. The State ought to fur¬ 
nish education, but not sectarianism; that is his own af¬ 
fair altogether. The right and wrong of this matter are 


7 ° 

evident: the State should not and does'not preve?it “Cath¬ 
olic education for Catholic children; ” but equally it 
should not and does not furnish it. 

2. The Catholic conscience demands freedom of exer¬ 
cise, says Bishop McQuaid, and he proceeds to declare: 
“ The majority of the people rule, by the power of num¬ 
bers, that a large minority shall not be free to educate 
their children according to their conscience.” I can only 
pass over this assertion in mute astonishment. The simple 
fact is, that Catholics are educating their children accord¬ 
ing to their consciences, either at the public or at the 
parochial schools, as they freely elect. 

3. The Catholic conscience demands “equal rights.” 
Very well: that it ought to have. The equal rights of 
the Catholics, like those of the liberals, are infringed by 
Protestant worship in the public schools. Equal rights 
will be established when the Catholics have as much right 
to have their religion taught in the schools as the Prot¬ 
estants, Jews or Radicals, — that is, no right at all. The 
trouble with the Catholics is that this equality of rights 
does not satisfy them ; they feel aggrieved unless their 
own religion is positively taught in the schools to which 
their children go. But, so far as the public schools are 
concerned, this is to demand unequal rights ; and this is 
to have a very unreasonable conscience. 

4. The Catholic conscience demands, in Bishop 
McQuaid’s words, “ the non-interference of the State in 
Church or in School.” On the other hand, the secular 
conscience requires the non-interference of the Church 
in State or School. To which shall the school belong, 
to the Church or to the State? That is indeed the clean 
issue. But I do not see any way to reconcile here 
the two consciences. I suspect they are equally stub¬ 
born, equally unable to yield; but which is the more rea¬ 
sonable, is a point which must prove in the end decisive. 


7i 


5* The Catholic'conscience claims to be violated by a 
system which supports Protestant schools at the public 
expense; and the justice of this claim must be allowed. 
To make the public schools Protestant by requiring or 
permitting Protestant worship in them is truly a violation 
of all but Protestant consciences. But it is easy to rectify 
this wrong, and to establish a perfect equality of rights in 
the case, by simply secularizing the schools altogether. 
If this would satisfy the Catholic conscience, a perma¬ 
nent settlement of the school question could be effected ; 
but the Catholic conscience is not satisfied with equality 
— it demands privilege , which is a very different matter. 

6. The Catholic conscience claims to be still more vio¬ 
lated by a system which should support secular schools 
at the public expense. Now what is a secular school ? 
A school in which the elementary branches of an English 
education — reading, writing, arithmetic, & c. — are 
taught, and in which religion is not taught; one which 
teaches nothing but what all children, whether of Catho¬ 
lic, Protestant, or liberal parentage, alike need to know, 
and which is scrupulously protected from all usurpation 
by any class of parents in the matter of religion. To pre¬ 
tend that this careful exclusion of all religious worship 
and instruction is to teach irreligion, is an instance of un¬ 
paralleled audacity. It is impossible to teach the alpha¬ 
bet or multiplication table and the Catholic catechism at 
one and the same instant; and even in the Catholic 
school a certain time is devoted to teaching the alphabet 
and the multiplication table exclusively. Is that to teach 
irreligion? It is undeniably to separate religious and 
secular education for the time being j but is that to teach 
irreligion ? I must press this question : is it teaching ir¬ 
religion to devote a portion of time exclusively to teach¬ 
ing arithmetic or geography? If it is, then Catholic 
schools also teach irreligion just so long as they are 


72 


teaching arithmetic or geography, and they should be de¬ 
nounced just as sweepingly as the public schools. But if 
not, — if it is not teaching irreligion to devote in Catho¬ 
lic schools one or two hours exclusively to instruction in 
secular knowledge, — then it is no more teaching irrelig¬ 
ion to devote in the public schools three or four or five 
hours to the same instruction. The Catholics may 
choose which horn of the dilemma they please: either 
the Catholic schools teach irreligion part of the time, or 
else the public schools do not teach irreligion at all. The 
sole ground of complaint against secular schools is that 
they omit to teach positive Catholic doctrine; and the 
attempt to twist this omission to teach Catholicism into a 
direct teaching of the contrary is a very desperate shift. 
Let me illustrate. I go to a carriage warehouse where 
buggies are advertised for sale, and order a horse and 
buggy. “But,” replies the proprietor, “I do not sell 
horses ; I sell only buggies.” “ That will do very well for 
those who want buggies only,” I answer; “ I don’t be¬ 
lieve in separating horses and buggies, and my conscience 
forbids me to purchase them separately.” “ I should be 
glad to accommodate you,” replies the puzzled proprie¬ 
tor, “but really, my dear sir, I have only buggies for 
sale.” “Then,” I exclaim, “I denounce you for a viola¬ 
tion of equal rights and for a secret purpose to outrage 
the community by abolishing horses. You grant all they 
ask to those who conscientiously want buggies alone ; but 
you refuse what I ask, when my conscience demands a 
horse and buggy, one and inseparable. This is an invid¬ 
ious discrimination against my equal rights, a direct as¬ 
sault on the very existence of all horses; and now I pro¬ 
pose to shut up your establishment altogether ! ” This is 
exactly what the Catholics are doing; they propose to 
shut up all State schools, if they can, because State 
schools can teach only secular knowledge, and not relig- 




73 

ion at the same time. They have profound scruples of 
conscience against buying buggies without horses. 

7. But the gist of the claims made by the Catholic con¬ 
science is that Catholic parents ought not to be taxed for 
any but Catholic schools, since they cannot conscientiously 
send their children to any other; and, since the State 
cannot support Catholic schools, Catholic parents ought 
to be relieved from school taxes altogether, or else to re¬ 
ceive back their own taxes from the State to be expended 
under their own control for Catholic schools. This is the 
beginning, middle, and end of the Catholic claim ; all 
other claims of the Catholic conscience grow out of this. 
Bishop McQuaid says distinctly: “Catholics who are 
thus taxed are, to the extent of the taxes they pay, pun¬ 
ished — persecuted for religion’s sake.” And again: “ It 
must not be lost sight of in this argument that our rights 
go where our money goes.” 

It is in the name, therefore, of Catholic parents , who 
are taxed by the State for the support of the public 
schools, that the whole protest of the Catholic conscience 
is entered. But in truth the State deals exclusively with 
individuals in this matter of taxation; it deals with them 
neither as Catholics nor even as parents, but simply and 
solely as citizens . The State does not ask whether the 
tax-payer is a Catholic, or Protestant, or Jew, or free 
thinker; it does not ask whether he is married or unmar¬ 
ried, a parent or childless; it only asks him to pay his 
fair proportion of the school expenses as an individual 
member of the civil community . Now the question whether 
the State, which wholly ignores the inquiry as to the tax¬ 
payer’s religion or family relations, has a right to tax all 
citizens indiscriminately for the support of the public 
school system, will presently come up for independent 
discussion; but I wish to point out that this general 
question is not raised by the Catholic conscience, which 


74 


claims exemption from the public school tax for Catholic 
parents as such. It is the duties imposed by Catholic 
parentage which constitute the ground of the demand of 
“ Catholic education for Catholic children ; ” and it ie the 
rights inherent in Catholic parentage which constitute at 
least the ostensible grounds of protest against taxation 
for the public schools. The protest is essentially a de¬ 
nial of the general obligations of citizenship in the name 
of chitrch membership and family ties. Before discussing 
the right of the State to tax all its citizens for public 
schools, I must first consider the astounding claim of 
Catholic parents to be treated as if they were not citizens 
at all, but to be excepted, set apart by themselves, and 
permitted to receive the benefits of the State without dis¬ 
charging the corresponding obligations. The Catholic 
claim is — not to be taxed for non-Catholic public 
schools ; and it rests wholly on the alleged absolute rights 
of Catholic parents as such. These rights, it is evident, 
must be closely scrutinized and analyzed. 

“parental prerogative.” 

The protest of the Catholic conscience against taxation 
for a non-Catholic public school system grows out of what 
Bishop McQuaid has well described as “ Parental Pre¬ 
rogative.” But in this matter he speaks not for himself 
alone. Chief-Justice Dunne, of Arizona, in a lecture de¬ 
livered a year ago, laid down these two principles as the 
basis of the Catholic demand respecting the schools : — 

“ I. Religious instruction is of paramount importance. 

“ 2. Each parent has the right to say what religious instruc¬ 
tion his child shall receive.” 

And he says in another passage : — 

“ This claim to the absolute control of our domestic affairs 
is a sacred right which we cannot yield to the State.” 


75 


The Catholic World for January speaks in the same 
strain, laying the foundation for the Catholic demands in 
a seemingly very harmless proposition : — 

• 

“Whatever you do, keep your hands off the family altar. 
Do not set foot into the hallowed precincts of the domestic 
sanctuary. The family, though subordinate, is not to be vio¬ 
lated by the State. Parents have rights which no govern¬ 
ment can usurp.” 

(These rights are intended to include absolute control 
over the education of children.) 

Rev. Father Muller, in his book called Public School 
Education , defines the doctrine of “ parental prerogative 
as follows: — 

“ It is not on the State, but on parents, that God imposed 
the duty to educate their children, a duty from which no 
State can dispense; nor can fathers and mothers relieve 
themselves of this duty by the vicarious assumption of the 
State. They have to give a severe account of their children 
on the Day of Judgment, and they cannot allow any power to 
disturb them in insisting upon their rights and making free 
use of them. The State has no more authority or control 
rightfully over our children than over a man’s wife. The 
right to educate our children is a right of conscience, and a 
right of the family. Now these rights do not belong to the 
temporal order at all; and outside of this the State has no 
claim, no right, no authority.” 

Again, condensing into a pregnant phrase the whole 
Catholic theory of “parental prerogative,” Father Muller 
emphatically declares — and I would solicit special at¬ 
tention to the declaration : — 

“ The social unit is the family , not the individual. ” 

Bishop McQuaid thus stated the same general position 
in a lecture at Rochester, N.Y., in March, 1872 : — 


76 

“ Parents have the right to educate their children. 

“ It is wrong for the State to interfere with the exercise of 
this right. 

“ By the establishment of Common Schools at the expense 
of all tax-payers, the State does interfere with this right, es¬ 
pecially in the case of poor parents who find it a burden to 
pay double taxes.” 

Last Sunday the Bishop expressed the same general 
views as follows : — 

“ The last to be heard and consulted is the one to whom 
the settlement of the question first and finally belongs — the 

parent of the child. In despite of all, the responsibility 

<if the education of his child falls on him, and on no one else. 
.... Parental rights precede State rights. A fa¬ 

ther’s right to the pursuit of happiness extends to that of his 
children as well. . . . Parental rights include parental du¬ 
ties and responsibilities before God and society.” 

After quoting various authorities in defence of his posi¬ 
tion, the Bishop continued : — 

“ It is the Christian view of parental rights and duties 

which is here given.The doctrine coming into vogue, 

that the child belongs to the State, is the dressing-up of an 
old skeleton of Spartan paganism, with its hideousness dimly 
disguised by a thin cloaking of Christian morality.” 

I have quoted enough, I think, to give a fair view of 
this theory of “ parental prerogative,” on which the Cath¬ 
olic protest against the public school system is founded. 
Its principal points are as follows, restated in something 
like logical order: — 

1. The social unit is the family, not the individual; 
and in the family the father is the supreme authority, or 
head, — both the wife and the children being required by 
the Catholic Church to “ obey ” him. 

2. The father, representing the family, is charged with 
all rights, powers, and responsibilities concerning the 





77 

education of the children. The State has absolutely no 
share either in the rights, powers, or responsibilities ; for 
all education must be Catholic, and the State has neither 
capacity nor authority to impart it. 

3. The State, consequently, by establishing a Common 
School System and taxing all citizens to support it, 
violates the sanctity of family rights, invades and usurps 
the “ Parental Prerogative,” and oppresses the father’s 
conscience by requiring him to support a system of 
schools to which he cannot send his children, and by 
which all these wrongs are committed. 

Here we have the core and pith of the Catholic pro¬ 
test against taxation for the public schools, so far as it is 
deemed wise to address it to the general intelligence of 
the American people. It is the side of the Catholic con¬ 
science which is turned to the outside world, although 
there is another side of it which is turned towards the 
Catholic Church. We see that, so far as this protest is 
addressed to the universal reason of mankind, it plants 
itself on a doctrine of “Parental Prerogative” which is 
at bottom a general social theory: namely, that society 
has for its ultimate unit the family, not th q individual, and 
that all the educational rights, powers and responsi¬ 
bilities of the family are concentrated in the father as the 
Divinely constituted head of the family. Whether, there¬ 
fore, the protest of the Catholic conscience against the 
public school system is an intrinsically reasonable con¬ 
science, or not, is a question which can only be deter¬ 
mined by examining the social theory on which it rests. 
Should this theory not prove to be inherently reasonable, 
but to involve unreason and injustice of a grave charac¬ 
ter, then the school question will be fundamentally 
changed. It will no longer be the question whether we 
ought to abandon the public school system out of def¬ 
erence to the rights of an oppressed minority, but rather 


78 

how we should most justly and most tenderly deal with 
the honest, but unenlightened and dangerously mis¬ 
guided, conscience of a sect which is discontented with 
the essential principles of republican institutions. This 
is certainly a* question of the greatest gravity; but it is 
not so grave as one which involves the possible abandon¬ 
ment of all State education. If the Catholic protest is 
actually not based on sound reason and impartial rev¬ 
erence for the rights of all, — if it turns out to be the 
stealthy and masked attack of an ambitious hierarchy on 
the bulwarks of popular liberty, — our minds will be, at 
least, relieved of much perplexity and embarrassment. 
What, then, is the intrinsic character of this doctrine of 
“ Parental Prerogative ” ? Is it true or false ? 

THE CATHOLIC SOCIAL THEORY A RELIC OF BARBARISM. 

Remembering clearly the chief features of the Catholic 
social theory which lies at the bottom of the so-called 
“Parental Prerogative,” — namely, that the social unit is 
the family, not the individual, and that all powers and 
rights touching the education of children are vested in 
the father, as the head of the family, — you will, gain a 
clearer insight into the truth of this matter, if, instead of 
giving you any reflections of my own, I read to you some 
pretty copious extracts from a book which every well- 
read person will recognize at once as one which enjoys a 
world-wide reputation of the highest possible character. 
I refer to the treatise of Sir Henry Sumner Maine on 
Ancient Law , a work which by common consent ranks 
among the ablest and most valuable productions of the 
century. What he has to say on this subject will hardly 
be gainsaid by any but the uninformed ; and I prefer to 
give his views in his own language without attempting to 
translate it into my own. Sir Henry Maine says : — 


79 


“ The effect of the evidence derived from comparative 
jurisprudence is to establish that view of the primeval con 
dition of the human race which is known as the Patriarchal 
Theory. . . . The difficulty, at the present stage of the in¬ 
quiry, is to know where to stop —to say of what races of men 
it is not allowable to lay down that the society in which they 
are united was originally organized on the patriarchal model. 
. . . The points which lie on the surface of the history are 
these. The eldest male parent, the eldest ascendant, is ab¬ 
solutely supreme in his household. His dominion extends to 
life and death, and is as unqualified over his children and 
their houses as over his slaves ; indeed, the relations of son- 
ship and serfdom appear to differ in little beyond the higher 
capacity which the child in blood possesses of becoming one 
day the head of a family himself. ... If I were attempting 
to express compendiously the characteristics of the situation 
in which mankind disclose themselves at the dawn of history, 
I should be satisfied to quote a few verses from the Odyssey 
of Homer : ‘ They have neither assemblies for consultation nor 
themistes, but every one exercises jurisdiction over his wives 
and children, and they pay no regard to one another.’ . . . 
[Archaic law] is full, in all its provinces, of the clearest indi¬ 
cations that society in primitive times was not what it is as¬ 
sumed to be at present, a collection of individuals. In fact, 
and in the view of the men who composed it, it was an ag¬ 
gregation of families. The contrast may be most forcibly ex¬ 
pressed by saying that the unit of an ancient society was the 
Family , — of a modern society the Individual. . . . ‘In most of 
the Greek states and in Rome there long remained the vestiges 
of an ascending series of groups out of which the State was 
at first constituted. The Family, House, and Tribe of the 
Romans may be taken as the type of them, and they are so 
described to us that we can scarcely help conceiving them as 
a system of concentric circles which have gradually expanded 
from the same point. The elementary group is the Family, 
connected by common subjection to the highest male ascend¬ 
ant. The aggregation of Families forms the Gens or House. 
The aggregation of Houses makes the Tribe. The aggrega¬ 
tion of Tribes constitutes the Commonwealth. . . . No doubt, 


8o 


when with our modern ideas we contemplate the union of in¬ 
dependent communities, we can suggest a hundred modes of 
carrying it out, the simplest of all being that the individuals 
comprised in the coalescing groups shall vote or act accord¬ 
ing to local propinquity; but the idea that a number of 
persons should exercise political rights in common simply be¬ 
cause they happened to live within the same topographical 
limits was utterly strange and monstrous to primitive an¬ 
tiquity. . . . This was the principle of local contiguity , now 
recognized everywhere as the condition of community in 
political functions.” 

We thus see clearly that the Roman Catholic social 
theory, according to which (in the very phrase of Father 
Muller himself) the “ social unit is the family, not the in¬ 
dividual,” appears to be a mere relic of primeval barbar¬ 
ism, the survival of an antiquated and fossilized concep¬ 
tion utterly out of harmony with the pervading spirit of 
modern society. 

THE “ PARENTAL PREROGATIVE” ONLY THE 11 P ATRIA 
POTESTAS.” 

A closer investigation only reveals this fact more 
plainly. The “Parental Prerogative” of Bishop Me- 
Quaid is nothing but a modification of the “ Patria Po- 
testas,” or Fatherly Authority of the ancient Roman law. 
What this was, Sir Henry Maine shows as follows: — 

“ On a few systems of law the family organization of the 
earliest society has left a plain and broad mark in the lifelong 
authority of the Father or other ancestor over the person and 
property of his descendants — an authority which we may 
conveniently call by its later Roman name of Patria Po- 
testas. No feature of the rudimentary associations of man¬ 
kind is deposed to by a greater amount of evidence than this, 
and yet none seems to have disappeared so generally and 
rapidly from the usages of advancing communities as this. 

. . . In the mature Greek jurisprudence, the rule advances a 


8i 


few steps on the practice hinted at in the Homeric literature ; 
and though very many traces of the stringent family obliga¬ 
tion remain, the direct authority of the parent is limited, as in 
European codes, to the non-age or minority of the children, 
or, in other words, to the period during which their mental 
and physical inferiority may always be presumed. . . . The 
Patria Potestas of the Romans, which is necessarily our type 
of the primeval paternal authority, is equally difficult to un¬ 
derstand as an institution of civilized life, whether we con¬ 
sider its incidence on the person or its effects on property. 
It is to be regretted that a chasm which exists in its history 
cannot be more completely filled. So far as regards the 
person, the parent, when our information commences, has over 
his children the jus vita necisque , the power of life and death, 
and a foi'tiori of uncontrolled personal chastisement; he can 
modify their personal condition at pleasure ; he can give a 
wife to his son ; he can give his daughter in marriage ; he can 
divorce his children of either sex ; he can transfer them to 
another family by adoption, and he can sell them. Late in the 
Imperial period we find vestiges of all these powers, but they 
are reduced within very narrow limits. The unqualified right 
of domestic chastisement has become a right of bringing 
domestic offences under the cognizance of the civil magis¬ 
trate ; the privilege of dictating marriage has declined into a 
conditional veto; the liberty of selling has been virtually 
abolished ; and adoption itself, destined to lose almost all its 
ancient importance in the reformed system of Justinian, can 
no longer be effected without the assent of the child trans- 
ferred to the adoptive parentage. In short, we are brought 
very close to the verge of the ideas which have at length pre¬ 
vailed in the modern world. . . . The movement of the pro¬ 
gressive societies has been uniform in one respect. Through 
all its course it has been distinguished by the gradual dissolu¬ 
tion of family dependency and the growth of individual ob¬ 
ligation in its stead. The Individual is steadily substituted 
for the Family , as the unit of which civil laws take account. 
. . . Nor is it difficult to see what is the tie between man and 
man which replaces by degrees those forms of reciprocity in 
rights and duties which have their origin in the Family. It 


82 


is contract. Starting, as from one terminus of history, from a 
condition of society in which all the relations of persons are 
summed up in the relations of Family, we seem to have 
steadily moved towards a phase of social order in which all 
these relations rise from the free agreement of Individuals.” 

We are now in a condition to understand precisely the 
value of that “ Parental Prerogative ” on which Bishop 
McQuaid and other Catholics base their claim that the 
school system violates “parental rights.” It is the “ old 
skeleton of” Roman “paganism” — dressed up with a 
“ thin cloaking of Christian morality.” It is the ancient 
and outgrown Patria Potestas, intruding itself into modern 
society with its claim of despotic authority for the father 
over his child, and ignoring both the personal rights of 
the child and the collective rights of society. It is the 
galvanized corpse of the old Patriarchal Theory, good 
enough for the days of Abraham, who in obedience to it 
undertook to murder his own son, but a disgusting 
anachronism in the nineteenth century and the Centen¬ 
nial Year. The school question cannot be justly referred 
for settlement to the “ parents ” alone; the children have 
something at stake — society has something at stake — 
and parents must dismiss the notion that their despotic 
selfishness will be allowed to substitute the rights of one 
party alone for the rights of three parties to this issue. 
The Catholic social theory, with its claim that “ the family, 
not the individual, is the social unit,” is the unburied 
skeleton of pre-historic barbarism, the most ancient and 
best authenticated relic in the keeping of the church; 
while the “ Parental Prerogative ” which is so confidently 
relied upon to crush the great public school system un¬ 
der its elephantine tread is nothing but the pale and 
powerless ghost of the ancient Roman Patria Potestas, 
with not enough substance in it to crush the life out 
of a daisy. 


83 


THE “PARENTAL PREROGATIVE” A MERE STALKING- 
HORSE OF THE POPE. 

But I have not got through with this “ Parental Pre¬ 
rogative ” yet. It is a most shrewd and sagacious appeal 
to the very democratic instinct to which it is really op¬ 
posed. It is an endeavor to rouse the jealous inde¬ 
pendence of the American father in repulse of a purely 
illusory attack on his reserved parental rights. That he 
has parental rights I am the very last to deny; I am a 
parent myself, and not slow to defend the rights of a 
parent. But it is tyranny for a parent to forget or disre¬ 
gard the rights of his child; and it is usurpation for a 
parent to defy or despise the rights of society. Let the 
parent by all means stand firmly by his true parental 
rights in this school question ; but let him be intelligent 
and self-restrained enough to recognize that he is not 
proprietor of all the rights in the case. Children are no 
longer the absolute property of the father. The plea of 
“ Parental Prerogative ” is well calculated to create a 
sense of wrong where no wrong exists — to sting ignor¬ 
ant parents into claiming a jurisdiction that does not be¬ 
long to them, and to induce them to look on the Catholic 
Church as the bold champion of their rights against the 
assaults of a tyrannical majority. Such parents as these 
need to have their eyes opened; they are unsuspicious 
dupes. When the Catholic Church pleads “ Parental 
Prerogative ” to break down the beneficent public 
school system, and seemingly champions the rights of 
parents against the oppressions and aggressions of the 
non-Catholic majority, such parents ought to see that the 
church does not recognize any “ Parental Prerogative ” at 
all as towards itself. No sooner has the Church succeeded 
in rescuing the Catholic parent from the imaginary jaws 
of the State, than it immediately proceeds to devour both 


8 4 

parent and child with its own jaws. It claims for the 
parent, so far as the State is concerned, absolute and un¬ 
divided authority over his child; but, as the Divinely 
deputed parent of all Catholics, it claims for itself abso¬ 
lute and undivided authority over both parent and child. 
It is well to understand this matter thoroughly. What¬ 
ever “ parental rights ” or “ parental prerogative ” the 
Church may claim for Catholic parents, it concedes to 
them no rights whatsoever that are inconsistent with its 
own autocratic dominion over them. Let no one for a 
moment imagine that the Church would tolerate any ex¬ 
ercise of “parental prerogative” which should withdraw 
Catholic children from parochial schools to place them in 
the public schools. That sort of parental independence 
it is swift to punish with the severest penalties in its 
power to inflict. I must adduce some evidence of this 
statement, to convince you that I am not talking at ran¬ 
dom. 

In the list of “ damnable heresies ” known as the Syl¬ 
labus Errorum denounced and condemned by Pope 
Pius IX. in 1864, the forty-eighth is as follows: — 

“ That method of instructing youth can be approved by 
Catholic men which is separated from the Catholic faith and 
from the power of the Church, and which has regard, or at 
least principally, to a knowledge of natural things only, and 
to the ends of social life on this earth.” 

The condemnation of this proposition is the explicit 
condemnation of all secular education by the supreme 
and infallible Head of the Church; and it forbids all 
Catholics to sanction or approve anything but strictly 
Catholic education. The whole warfare of the Catholic 
Church in this country against the public school system 
is the direct consequence of obedience to this command 
of the Pope*; and the Church could not possibly recog- 


85 

nize any “ parental prerogative ” which should dare to 
dispute it. 

Further, in answer to the question, “ Who is bound to 
obey the Church ? ” the Catholic Catechism replies: 
“ All baptized persons, for we are commanded by Jesus 
Christ himself to obey his Church.” What “parental 
prerogative ” is left outside of this obligation of universal 
obedience ? 

But I do not adduce merely abstract declarations of 
Syllabus or Catechism. The Dubuque Daily Telegraph 
of Jan. 3, only seven weeks ago, had this paragraph: — 

“Father Ryan announced in St. Patrick’s Church yesterday 
that the rule heretofore adopted of refusing the Sacrament of 
Penance and Holy Eucharist to parents who send their chil¬ 
dren to the public schools would be enforced and adhered to 
henceforth. He spoke emphatically on the matter, and ad¬ 
vised parents who send their children to the public schools 
not to attempt to approach the sacraments, while they persist 
in refusing obedience to this law of the Church, alleging that 
such is the law.” 

Remember that to refuse the sacrament to a Catholic is 
practically to condemn him to an eternal hell. 

There can be no doubt that this is the law of the 
Church. Bishop Gilmour, of Cleveland, explicitly de¬ 
clared it to be the law in his Lenten Pastoral of 1873, as 
follows: — 

“We solemnly charge and most positively require every 
Catholic in the diocese to support, and send his children to, a 
Catholic school. When good Catholic schools exist, where 
it may be honestly said a child will get a fair common school 
education,—if parents, either through contempt for the 
priest or through disregard for the laws of the church, refuse 
to send their children to a Catholic school, then, in such 
cases, but in such cases only, we authorize confessors to re¬ 
fuse the sacraments to such parents as thus despise the laws 


of the Church, and disobey the command of both priest and 
bishop.” 

In Rhode Island, acccording to the New York Inde¬ 
pendent of Feb. io, 1876, “ it seems that the father of a 
Miss De Fray made an affidavit in which he swore that 
the mother of the child had been excluded from the 
sacred rites of the Catholic Church, because she allowed 
her daughter to attend the public school, and was told 
that, so long as she persisted in doing so, she would not 
be entitled to the privileges of the Church.” In con¬ 
sequence of this oppression, a bill has actually been in¬ 
troduced into the Rhode Island Legislature to prohibit 
such interference with family affairs. In other words, 
the State, which is denounced as violating “parental 
rights,” is actually invoked to protect Catholic parents 
from violation of these very rights by their own priests ! 

I must not fail to add some personal testimony of my 
own to the same effect. Last Sunday evening, Bishop 
McQuaid lectured on “ Catholic Education for Catholic 
Children,” in St. Mary’s Hall, Cambridgeport; and, de¬ 
siring to hear him speak on this subject to a Catholic au¬ 
dience, I attended the lecture. Among other things, he 
said substantially this (I may not give the exact words in 
every part, but I know I give the exact substance of his 
words): “Now I am going to read to you from the Syl¬ 
labus ', which is a bugbear to many people, as if it were the 
horn of the beast of the Apocalypse thrown into the 
world to make mischief. But the Syllabus is only the 
condensation of great truths which the world needs for its 
salvation.” He then read the extract I have already 
quoted, condemning so emphatically all Catholics who 
approve of any education apart from the faith and power 
of the Church, and said, with a lowering of the voice and 
an intensity of manner and tone which well conveyed the 
verbally suppressed menace: “Whoever does not believe 


' 8 7 

in the Syllabus as the infallible truth of God ceases to he a 
Catholic . He may perhaps attend Mass, and go to con¬ 
fession ; but ” — and he spoke with an emphasis sure not 
to be misunderstood — “Iwould not like to have the ab¬ 
solving of him ! ” 

Such, then, is the extent of the “parental prerogative” 
which the Bishop so eloquently claimed for Catholic par¬ 
ents on Sunday afternoon, and as eloquently scattered to 
the four winds of heaven on Sunday evening. Nothing 
can be plainer than that the Catholic conscience hurled 
against the school system is not the free and independ¬ 
ent consciences of individual Catholic parents, but rather 
the conscience formed irresistibly in them by the clergy 
to whom they listen with fettered minds, massed like an 
obedient and well-disciplined army in defence of the 
Church. It is not the unbiassed conscience of the par¬ 
ents as such, left to form their candid opinions in pro¬ 
foundly respected liberty, but the coerced and yet hon¬ 
est conscience of spiritual slaves. It is, in short, not the 
conscience of free parents at all, but the organic con¬ 
science of the Church of Rome, knowing its own inter¬ 
ests, oblivious of everything else, and determined to pro¬ 
tect them at all costs. It is the conscience of the priests, 
the bishops, and the Pope, using the consciences of the 
laity as mere pawns in their desperate game with mod¬ 
ern civilization. Let us understand the matter ; the bat¬ 
tle is between the corporate, consolidated, ecclesiastical 
conscience of the Roman Papacy, on the one hand, and, 
on the other, the multitudinous, independent, and secular 
consciences of the American Republic — nothing but 
that; and this whole theory of “ parental prerogative,” 
which is now held up high before the gaze of the outside 
world in order to compass the destruction of the public 
schools, and now trampled scornfully under foot within 
the precincts of the Church in order to build up the paro- 


83 


chial schools, has no life, meaning, or veracity except as 
the Pope’s stalking-horse. In saying this, I do not in 
the least question the sincerity of the Roman priesthood. 
Ambition is a terribly sincere thing ; despotism is a ter¬ 
ribly sincere thing. But the American citizen who is de¬ 
ceived by this talk of “ parental prerogative ” and con¬ 
sents to abolish the public schools out of tenderness for 
“parental rights,” unbolts and unbars the cage of a tiger 
whose first leap will be at his own throat. The Church 
cares nothing for parental rights except as an outer wall 
of defence against the Republic’s just claim to establish 
schools for the education of her own children. Before 
the Church, the parent has no right but to obey. The 
Pope commands the bishops; the bishops command the 
priests ; the priests command the parents; the parents 
command the children ; and the burden of the command 
is evermore the same — “Believe and obey!” That is 
the beginning, middle, and end of “ parental prerogative.” 
Shall any freeman be so simple as not to know slavery 
when he sees it? 

THE AMERICAN SOCIAL THEORY. 

No — it is high time for all who would enjoy liberty to 
understand the conditions of liberty. While the Church 
is built on the social theory which makes the family, not 
the individual, the social unit; while it binds the parent 
both to be a true and obedient Catholic himself, and to 
make his children also true and obedient Catholics; and 
while it teaches the doctrine of “ parental prerogative ” in 
this, and no other sense, — the free State is built on a so¬ 
cial theory exactly the reverse of this. It recognizes the 
individual, and not the family, as the true social unit, the 
ultimate atom of human society; and it exists solely to 
guarantee and to protect the equal natural rights of all 
individuals. This is the distinctly avowed basis of the 


8 9 

American Republic. The Declaration of Independence 
proclaims, as the first great principle of our national ex¬ 
istence, that “all men are created equal all men , all in¬ 
dividuals, not all families or all parents. The preamble 
of the United States Constitution, ordaining and estab¬ 
lishing the fundamental law of the land, does so in the 
name of— “We the people : ” that is, we, the aggregated 
individuals who compose the people, and not we the fam¬ 
ilies, or we the parents. In accordance with this initial 
recognition of individuality and the rights of individual¬ 
ity as the prime fact of human society, all our institutions 
are framed. Our national life consists in a fuller and 
higher realization of this supreme principle. While the 
Church binds women and children to domestic servitude 
under man, as the Divinely appointed head of the family, 
the State is coming more and more to restrict this irra¬ 
tional and oppressive supremacy of man. It is coming to 
recognize woman as man’s equal before the law; it has 
long regarded marriage as a civil contract only, and this 
is leading to the gradual establishment of woman’s equal 
civil and political rights. That is the deeper meaning of 
the woman movement, which aims to establish and pro¬ 
tect woman’s right to the enjoyment of her own free indi¬ 
viduality. So also the movement for a better and more 
strictly universal education, the movement to extend and 
improve the public school system, is at bottom nothing 
but the State’s growing consciousness that children are 
also individuals, with all the rights of individuality, — 
not, as the Church makes them, the personal property of 
the father, but really wards entrusted to his fostering care 
during the period of their immaturity. Just as the move¬ 
ment for female suffrage is a growing recognition of 
the rights of women as individuals, so is the movement 
for better public schools a growing recognition of the 
rights of children as individuals. Whoever would con- 


9 o 


sent to the abolition of State schools, which are necessa¬ 
rily imbued with this principle of the individual rights of 
children, consents to the substitution in their place of the 
inevitable Church schools, which are all more or less 
imbued with the principle of the Christianized Patria 
Potestas. 

Alas for the radicalism which, through jealousy of the 
State, would thus unwittingly hand over the education 
of children to the Church! The abolition of State 
schools means the inevitable establishment of denomina¬ 
tional or Church schools. But the social theory and ten¬ 
dency of the State is the development of free individual¬ 
ity, while that of the Church is the development of eccle¬ 
siastical despotism. Which has the better claim to be 
the educator of those on whose shoulders must rest the 
responsibility of handing down free institutions to poster¬ 
ity? Vicar-General Wendischmann, of Munich, who 
clearly saw that the control of the future belongs to those 
who educate the children of the present, and who uttered 
the profound conviction and fixed purpose of the con¬ 
solidated Roman hierarchy, did not exaggerate the im¬ 
portance of the school question, when he exclaimed: 
“The struggle for the school has the same importance in 
the nineteenth century that the struggle for the occupancy 
of the bishoprics had in the eleventh.” It is indeed so. 
There are but two contestants in this great controversy — 
the despotic and remorseless Church of Rome, the demo¬ 
cratic and humane Republic of America; and that one 
of the two which shall control the education of the com¬ 
mon people will be lord of the land from the Atlantic to 
the Pacific Ocean. 

RIGHTS OF THE CHILD. 

I think it must now be sufficiently clear that, instead of 
handing over the school question for final settlement to 


9i 


the parents alone, as Bishop McQuaid recommends (of 
course with the reservation that the parents must settle it 
just as the Church dictates, on pain of being deprived of 
absolution for their sins), the question can only be justly 
settled by the whole community, after a careful consider¬ 
ation of the rights of the three parties interested : namely, 
the children, the parents, and the State. Parent though 
I am, I should refuse to be made judge in a case in which 
I am myself one of three equally interested parties ; and' 
I must decline election to the bench under such circum¬ 
stances, even on so flattering a nomination. But I find 
it my duty to present to the community, the real tribunal, 
my view of the case as involving these three classes of 
rights. 

The child’s principal rights as an individual seem to 
be, briefly, these : — 

1. The right to existence. The father has no right to 
deprive him of it, for that would be murder, and the State, 
the protector of rights, would not admit the plea of “par¬ 
ental prerogative ” as any defence against the just punish¬ 
ment of the crime. Even before the child’s birth, his in¬ 
dividual right to existence begins; and foeticide is justly 
regarded as a crime of the blackest dye. 

2. The right to proper maintenance, including food, 
clothing, and shelter. To withhold these is a crime against 
the laws of the State, which again stands ready to invade 
the “sanctity” of my household, if I press my “parental 
prerogative ” so far as to wrong the little being entrusted 
to me by a wilful failure to provide for its fundamental 
wants. 

3. The right to a fair education, as the necessary con¬ 
dition of a happy and useful career in the life for which 
I am responsible. This right is very imperfectly pro¬ 
tected by the law; and it is a right which constitutes a 
claim not only on the parent, but on the State. Society 


92 


has even a larger stake in my child’s education than I 
have, since the larger portion of the child’s life is to be 
spent away from my care and control. The child has a 
right to be educated, for his own sake and for society’s 
sake; and society, having at least as large a stake as 
mine in his future, must share with me the duty and the 
expense of furnishing the education. The burden and 
the cost of the education by which society is to be bene¬ 
fited at last even more than I, and to which the child may 
plead justly a natural right, ought in equity to be divided 
between the State and the parent. The right of the child 
to education, therefore, constitutes in equity a joint claim 
on both . 

4. The right to be protected by the State against par¬ 
ental selfishness, cruelty, ignorance, indifference, super¬ 
stition. No parent has a right to over-work a child for 
the sake of his little earnings, or to work him at all to the 
neglect of his education. No parent has a right to abuse 
the child in any way. Such things as these are violations 
of the child’s rights as an individual, and ought to be 
protected better than they are. The State is responsible 
for this protection, and sometimes affords it. An im¬ 
portant case has just occurred in England, in which the 
State most righteously interfered to protect children from 
the unintentional cruelty resulting from mere superstition. 
Harper's Weekly , in its issue of Dec. 18, 1875, says : — 

“ An important decision has been given by Lord Coleridge 
in the case of the ‘Peculiar People,’ which was carried up on 
appeal. A member of this sect, for neglect to provide medi¬ 
cal attendance for his sick child, was charged with man¬ 
slaughter. The conviction for this offence in the court be¬ 
low was affirmed by the judges. Baron Bramwell said that 
‘ the man thought that to fulfil the duty imposed by statute 
was wrong; the law, however, did not excuse him on that ac¬ 
count.’ ” 


93 


It is part of the creed of this sect of the “Peculiar 
People ” never to call in medical aid in sickness, but to 
rely only on prayer; and it was rightly held that the 
child’s right to decent care in his sickness could not lapse 
by reason of the father’s superstition. This is a very in¬ 
structive case, and shows how respect for the rights of 
children is gradually abolishing the barbarous “ parental 
prerogative.” The plea of parental “ conscience ” in this 
instance is no justification for the infringement of the 
child’s right to life; it will be found equally invalid in 
justification of infringement of his right to education. 
The child has a right not to be taught superstitions which 
shall unfit him to be either a good man or a good citizen. 
He has a right to be taught what the rights of others are, 
and what his own corresponding duties are. A school 
which should teach children that it is wrong to take or to 
give medical advice in sickness would be as mischievous 
and criminal in character as a school for instruction in 
the “ fine art ” of murder. The facts of the universe dis¬ 
covered by physical or moral science are a part of the 
great human heritage of which it is as much a crime to 
defraud a child as to defraud him of his share in his 
father’s estate. Children’s rights in these matters have 
yet to be studied and defined far more exactly, and pro¬ 
tected far more efficiently, than is done to-day; and they 
have a very important bearing on the whole school ques¬ 
tion. 

Children, therefore, have, as individuals and members of 
society , a right to life, a right to maintenance, a right to 
education in the knowledge of those facts of the universe 
which are essential to their social welfare, and a right to 
protection against their own ignorance of those facts, 
whether enforced in the name of “ parental prerogative ” 
or any other name; and the State, which exists to pro¬ 
tect individual rights, should protect the child from viola- 


94 

tion of these rights either by its own parents or by the 
Church. 

RIGHTS OF THE PARENT. 

But the parent has also rights which are just as sacred 
as those of the child; and I am just as strenuous for the 
protection of them as Bishop McQuaid. 

1. The parent has a right to exercise authority over 
the child so long as he does not violate the rights of the 
child or the rights of the State. His authority is that of 
the natural guardian of the child, not that of his owner or 
proprietor; and it can only be exercised within the limits 
of that relationship. The child’s reason and conscience 
being undeveloped, the parent represents them during the 
child’s minority, and is consequently bound to act from 
his own mature reason and conscience, not from his own 
arbitrary will or caprice. Being justly required to main¬ 
tain the child, he has a right to such small services as the 
child may render without being deprived of the rights 
above defined; and he is no tyrant or oppressor in re¬ 
quiring from the child a general deference and obedience 
to his own commands. The natural affection for his off¬ 
spring, and the natural wisdom derived from superior ex¬ 
perience, which must be presumed to be his until the con¬ 
trary is proved, entitle him to be free from all intrusive 
interference or petty supervision on part of the State in 
the exercise of his authority as the child’s natural guard¬ 
ian ; and it is only after a manifest and proved abuse of 
this authority that the State can justly interpose its shield 
over the child. From the nature of the case, there is 
little danger of too much interference by the State; the 
danger is all the other way. 

2 . The parent has also the right to supervise and direct 
the education of the child to a very considerable extent. 
Provided he does not withhold altogether the education 
to which the child has the right already explained, he may 


95 


justly decide the place where it is to be acquired, and the 
agencies by which it is to be imparted. He may either 
educate the child himself, or send him to a public or pri¬ 
vate school at his own option. The child has simply a 
right to a certain amount of education; provided he is 
not deprived of this, places and times and instrumentali¬ 
ties are nobody’s concern but the parent's. Especially 
with regard to religion and religious influences, the par¬ 
ent has an undoubted right to teach his child what he 
believes to be the most important of all truths. But there 
is a plain limitation of this right. Under the name of 
religion he has no right to teach anything which shall lead 
the child to trample on the rights of others or unfit him 
for the duties and responsibilities of good citizenship. 
The State has a wholly independent right to protect the 
child from such abuse of parental authority as this. No 
parent, for instance, has a right to teach his child that 
stealing is the proper way to secure a livelihood. If he 
does, the State has a right to interfere and see that the 
child is taught to respect the rights of others with regard 
to property. There is a certain natural morality resulting 
from the mere co-existence of many individuals with equal 
rights in one society; and this the parent has no right to 
disregard in any instruction he may give to his child. 
But he has a right to teach his child whatever views of 
religion, outside of this natural morality, he may hold to 
be true and precious. All that the State has a right 
to require is that the child shall not be prevented from 
knowing what is essential to the discharge of his duties as 
a member of society, and shall not be taught what is in¬ 
consistent with those duties. 

THE RIGHTS OF THE STATE. 

Besides the child and the parent, the State has rights 
and duties of its own absolutely independent of the 


9 6 

Church. It does not ask any permission of the Church 
to exist or ensure the conditions of its own existence. 
Rightly considered, the State is nothing but human 
society, acting collectively to preserve the equality of 
rights among all the individuals that compose it, and to 
guarantee to each individual the maximum of individual 
liberty which is compatible with this equality of rights. 
If all individuals knew and respected the rights of others, 
there would be no need of the State as an organized 
power; and the power of the State will fall into disuse 
precisely in the proportion that all individuals do actually 
learn to know and respect the rights of others. The or¬ 
ganized power of the State, however, must continue to be 
exercised until that day; afnd it does not exist by the suf¬ 
ferance of, or in subordination to, the organization known 
as the Church. 

1. The first great right of the State, then, is to exist, 
and to perpetuate its own existence. Whatever condi¬ 
tions are indispensable to its existence, it has an absolute 
right to require. It is based wholly on the social theory 
that the individual, not the family, is the social unit. On 
this theory its right to exist as an organization rests on 
the prior rights of the individuals that compose it; and 
its whole function is to maintain, protect and enlarge, as 
much as possible, these antecedent individual rights. 

2. The second great right of the State is to establish 
universal suffrage, as the necessary condition of its own 
existence as a society in which the rights of all individu¬ 
als shall be equally respected. 

3. The third great right of the State is to establish 
universal intelligence and social morality, as the necessary 
condition of universal suffrage. 

4. The fourth great right of the State is to establish 
universal education, as the necessary condition of univer¬ 
sal intelligence and social morality. 


97 


5 - The fifth great right of the State is to establish a 
universal system of public schools, as the necessary con¬ 
dition of universal education. 

6 . The sixth great right of the State is to establish 
universal use of the means of education by the instruction 
of all children either at the public schools, or at private 
schools, or at home, as the parents may elect; and, 
further, to establish public examinations of all children at 
proper times and places. If the children pass these 
examinations successfully, the State will be satisfied, no 
matter how or when or where they acquired the requisite 
knowledge; but, in the case of children who fail to pass 
the examinations, it will properly require them to attend 
such schools as shall furnish it. 

All these six rights are involved in the right of the 
State to exist as a society of individuals whose equal 
rights are universally known and respected. A knowl¬ 
edge of these rights and the corresponding duties consti¬ 
tutes that social morality which should be taught in the 
public schools; and it can be taught easily from text¬ 
books which shall not infringe in the least on the religious 
beliefs of anybody. All religions profess to teach it; it 
can be taught, and should be taught, as a simple matter 
of positive knowledge, without stepping outside of the 
circle of the common relations of human life. 

THE STATE’S RIGHT TO TAX FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Now, from what I have said, it clearly follows that the 
State has a right to tax all its tax-payers for the support 
of public schools : — 

i. Because the child’s right to an elementary education 
is a joint claim upon the parent and the State; and the 
State can only discharge its own part of the obligation by 
maintaining a public school system. 


9 S 

2. Because the State finds the public school system to 
be an absolute condition of its own existence as a free 
society, charged with the protection of all individual 
rights, including the rights of children as individuals. 

3. Because the school taxes are collected for the sup¬ 
port of the school system as a whole, of which all tax¬ 
payers alike receive the benefit through the perpetuation 
of the State as the protector of all individual rights, in¬ 
cluding their own. If the State has the right to tax all 
for any purpose, it has the right to tax them all for the 
public schools, which are the indispensable condition of 
its own continued existence. The school tax, paid by 
each tax-payer, is not the payment of his separate bill for 
the instruction of his own child, for he may be childless, 
yet justly taxed all the same. The school tax is only the 
just assessment on each tax-payer of his share of the cost 
incurred in maintaining the existence of the State which 
protects his individual rights in all their multiplicity. It 
is a distorted, false and wretchedly contracted view of the 
matter to see nothing in the school tax but a bill for the 
tuition of the tax-payer’s own children. On the contrary, 
it is only a part of his general contribution to the support 
of the State itself. 

That it is not only the right, but the duty, of the State 
to support a system of public schools, which can only be 
done by the impartial taxation of all, is no new doctrine. 
Daniel Webster said : “ The power over education is one 
of the powers of public police belonging essentially to 
government. It is one of those powers the exercise of 
which is indispensable to the preservation of society, to 
its integrity, and its healthy action. It is evident, there¬ 
fore, that popular cultivation, as diffuse and general as 
the numbers comprising the Republic, is indispensable to 
the preservation of our republican forms; and hence arises 
the great constitutional duty of the government. It is the 


99 


duty of self-preservation, according to the mode of its ex¬ 
istence, for the sake of the common good.” 

Barsdow, the great-grandfather of Professor Max Mul¬ 
ler, about a hundred years ago taught the true doc¬ 
trine on this subject in Germany. The German Biogra- 
phia , recently published by the Bavarian government, 
says, in its life of Barsdow: “ This one great principle he 
established: that national education is a national duty; 
that national education is a sacred duty; and that to 
leave national education to chance, church, or charity, is 
a national sin ! Another principle which followed, in fact 
as a matter of course, as soon as the first principle was 
granted, was this: that in national schools, in schools 
supported by the nation at large, you can only teach that 
on which we all agree; hence, when children belong to 
different sects, you cannot teach theology.” 

On this great right and duty of the State to perpetuate 
itself, and on the impossibility of its doing so, when its 
fundamental basis is the equal rights of all individuals, 
except by means of a State education which shall be uni¬ 
versal and secular, rests the great positive argument for 
the public school system, and the justification of the State 
in taxing all tax-payers equitably and impartially for its 
support. It is no wrong to any man to tax him for this 
purpose, even though he be childless ; it is no wrong to 
tax him for it, even though he prefer to send his child 
elsewhere than to the public schools, as many besides 
Catholics do ; for the protection of his individual rights in 
this free Republic is a full and fair equivalent of his money. 
When the Catholic conscience, which is only the con¬ 
science of the Pope enforced on all Catholics, and not the 
free, independent consciences of Catholic parents as indi¬ 
viduals, claims exemption from this just school tax, it is a 
selfish, blind and arrogant attempt to get the benefits of 
this free government without paying for what they get. 


IOO 


It is a conscience essentially unreasonable and unjust ; 
and reason and justice, therefore, command the American 
people to follow unflinchingly the better-instructed con¬ 
science which has built, and will still sustain, the grand 
American system of public schools. It only remains to 
make them absolutely just by making them absolutely 
secular. 



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THE INDEX, 

A Weekly Paper devoted to Free and Rational Religion. 


EDITOR: FRANCIS E. ABBOT. 

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS: 

O. B. FROTHINGHAM, New York City. 

WILLIAM J. POTTER, New Bedford, Mass. 

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Mrs. E. D. CHENEY, Jamaica Plain, Mass. 

Rev. CHARLES VOYSEY, London, England. 

GEORGE JACOB HOLYOAKE, London, Eng. 
DAVID H. CLARK, Florence, Mass. 


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